Demeger and Bramhill Lead THE WOMAN IN BLACK U.K. Tour, Begins 1/12

Robert Demeger and Peter Bramhill are set to star in the upcoming UK tour of THE WOMAN IN BLACK, written by Stephen Mallatratt. Demeger will play Arthur Kipps and Bramhill will play Young Actor. The tour will open January 12th at the Richmond Theatre and will play there until January 16th.

Eel Marsh House stands tall, gaunt and isolated, surveying the endless flat saltmarshes beyond the Nine Lives Causeway, somewhere on England's bleak East Coast. Here Mrs Alice Drablow lived - and died - alone. Young Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is ordered by his firm's senior partner to travel up from London to attend her funeral and then sort out all her papers. His task is a lonely one, and at first Kipps is quite unaware of the tragic secrets which lie behind the house's shuttered windows. He only has a terrible sense of unease. And then, he glimpses a young woman with a wasted face, dressed all in black, at the back of the church during Mrs Drablow's funeral, and later, in the graveyard to one side of Eel Marsh House. Who is she? Why is she there? He asks questions, but the locals not only cannot or will not give him answers - they refuse to talk about the woman in black, or even to acknowledge her existence, at all. So, Arthur Kipps has to wait until he sees her again, and she slowly reveals her identity to him - and her terrible purpose.

The Woman In Black treads in the footsteps of the classic ghost story, following the tradition of Charles Dickens and M.R James, of Henry James and Edith Wharton. It is not a horror story or a tale of terror, yet the events build up to a horrifying climax and instil a sense of horror. It relies on atmosphere, a vivid sense of place, on hints and glimpses and suggestions, on what is shadowy, heard and sometimes only half-seen, to chill the reader's blood to the marrow and make reading the book alone at night inadvisable for the faint-hearted.

Stephen Mallatratt's adaptation for the stage remains entirely true to the book itself and uses much of Susan Hill's own descriptive writing and dialogue, while transforming the novel into a totally gripping piece of theatre.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK is one of the UKs longest running shows, having played for the last 21 years. The play is currently running at the Fortune Theatre. THE WOMAN IN BLACK is an adaptation of the Susan Hill novel of the same name, written in 1983.

The tour is set to run 25 cities around the United Kingdom, including tour dates at Salford (January 18th-23rd), Newcastle (January 25th-30th), Leicester (February 1st-6th), Woking (February 8th-13th), Edinburgh (February 16th-20th), Sheffield (February 22nd-27th), Cambridge (March 1st-6th), Darlington (March 8th-13th), Blackpool (March 18th-20th), Swindon (March 22nd-27th), Swansea (March 29th-April 3rd), Northampton (April 5th-10th), Hastings (April 12th-17th), Brighton (April 19th-24th), Belfast (April 26th-May 1st), Nottingham (May 4th-8th), Cheltenham (May 10th-15th), Liverpool (May 31st-June 5th), Glasgow (June 7th-12th), Cardiff (June 14th-19th), Norwich (June 21st-26th) and Southend (June 28th-July 3rd).

Tickets for the tour may be purchased through THE WOMAN IN BLACK's website at www.thewomaninblack.com/uktour.html.

For more information, visit www.thewomaninblack.com.