There's nothing more theatrically appropriate for the Halloween season than an old-fashioned, scary mystery. Alas, The Haunting of Hill House does not meet the test. Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name is considered a masterpiece of psychological horror. But as adapted for the stage by F. Andrew Leslie, there's little sense of mounting terror or sinister foreboding.
The opening scenes are promising, with the separate arrival of two women, strangers to each other. They've been invited to the 80-year-old house with its history of suicide and madness (it has been uninhabited for 20 years) by a Dr. Montague, who believes they have special qualities that will help him investigate supernatural phenomena. Eleanor Vance (Kim Holton) has experienced poltergeists, and Theodora (Glenn Whitelaw) has the gift of extrasensory perception. (How the good doctor found them isn't explained, along with a lot of other things in this creaky vehicle.)
Met by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs. Dudley (a mirror image of Mrs. Danvers from "Rebecca"), who will cook for them but not wait on them, and who leaves before dark each evening to go back to the town six miles distant from isolated Hill House, the women are soon joined by Dr. Montague (Michael Gaither), jokey Luke Sanderson (Dennis Stilger), who expects to inherit the property when an aunt dies; Montague's shrill domineering wife, and her lapdog young schoolmaster named Arthur Parker (K. Jason Highley). Elaine Hackett as Mrs. Dudley is spot on, just menacing and nasty enough to be great fun. But when she becomes Mrs. Montague, the screechy, ear-piercing voice she adopts for that character, and her exaggerated poses and arm-waving, are so annoying they destroy whatever mood the other actors are trying to build.
The whole exercise is a thankless task for the cast. The suspension of disbelief one must have to enjoy such a play materializes only fitfully. The denouement is a muddle. Loose ends are still loose at play's end.
