Cast Announced for The Woman in Black
For Immediate Release
Media Contact: John Karastamatis, Sue Toth, Erin Nantais – Mirvish Productions
CAST ANNOUNCED FOR
THE OTHER CHRISTMAS GHOST STORY
THE WOMAN IN BLACK
BEGINS IN THREE WEEKS
CAA THEATRE | DECEMBER 4, 2025 – JANUARY 4, 2026
CRITIC’S PICK “Ingenious. A journey into fear.” - New York Times
“The most brilliantly effective spine-chiller you will ever encounter.” - Daily Telegraph
“Guaranteed to chill the blood.” - Evening Standard
“The scariest show in town.” - Chicago Tribune
The Canadian premiere of the record-breaking original London production of The Woman in Black – often called the other Christmas ghost story – arrives in Toronto in three weeks. Set on Christmas Eve, The Woman in Black will play throughout the holiday season, December 4, 2025 to January 4, 2026, at Toronto’s CAA Theatre.
Tickets are available at mirvish.com or by calling 1.800.461.3333
About the show
A lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over him and his family by the specter of a Woman in Black, engages a skeptical young actor to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. It all begins innocently enough, but then, as they reach further into his darkest memories, they find themselves caught up in a world of eerie marshes and moaning winds.
Susan Hill’s acclaimed best-selling novel comes dramatically alive in Stephen Mallatratt’s ingenious stage adaptation. One of the most successful and longest running theatre shows in the history of London’s West End – 33 years and more than 13,000 performances – director Robin Herford’s original gripping production is now touring North America. Seen by over 7 million people worldwide, The Woman in Black continues to delight and haunt audiences of all generations.
The Cast
Three acclaimed actors star in The Woman in Black - David Acton as Arthur Kipps, Ben Porter as Arthur Kipps/The Actor, and James Byng as The Actor.
DAVID ACTON (Arthur Kipps)
David played Arthur Kipps in The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre in London’s West End, on tour across the UK, in New York, Princeton and Phoenix. For the Royal Shakespeare Company: Macbeth, The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Hamlet, The Comedy of Errors, The Constant Couple, The Man of Mode, The Love of the Nightingale, King Lear, The Winter’s Tale, As You Like It, Henry V, Edward III, Eastward Ho!, The Roman Actor. Theatre also includes: The Two Popes (Frankfurt English Theatre), Gaslight (The Mill at Sonning); A Day by the Sea (Southwark Playhouse); Jane Wenham the Witch of Walkern (Out of Joint); Richard II (Palace of Westminster and Arcola). A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors, Henry V and Twelfth Night (Propeller); Anjin: The Shogun and the Samurai (Tokyo, Osaka, Yokohama and London Sadler’s Wells); The League of Youth, Vertigo, Burial at Thebes and I Have Been Here Before (Nottingham Playhouse); Relatively Speaking and Copenhagen (Newbury Watermill); The Dark Things (Edinburgh Traverse); Richard II (Old Vic Company); Much Ado About Nothing (Peter Hall Company); Jason and the Argonauts, Sabbat and Peter Pan (Lancaster Dukes); The Man From the Sleepy Lagoon (one-man show). TV includes: Call The Midwife, Shakespeare and Hathaway, Emmerdale, 14 Diaries of the Great War, 18 Clash of Futures, Doctors, Hostage (Fire in the Desert), EastEnders, Silent Witness, Passage, Hollyoaks, Tchaikovsky, The Bill, Blair on Trial, Class of ’76, Casanova’s Love Letters, Fooling Hitler, The Wyvern Mystery, Randall and Hopkirk
(Deceased), Casualty. Film includes: The Squadron, For Grace, After Death, Volume, Persuasion. He has been a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company.
BEN PORTER (Arthur Kipps/The Actor)
Ben is proud to be the first ever actor to play both roles in The Woman in Black. He was nominated for a Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance in New York in 2020 for this production of The Woman in Black. Highlights from theatre includes For the National Theatre: The Invention of Love, The Heiress, An Enemy of the People (also the Ahmanson Theatre Los Angeles). 1984 (West End/US Tour/Melbourne), The Indian Queen (Opera de Lille, France), Bedroom Farce, Ten Times Table and Improbable Fiction (The Mill at Sonning Theatre), Boeing Boeing (Manchester Theatre Award nominee for Best Supporting Actor). Orwell: A Celebration (Trafalgar Studios), Restoration (Salisbury Playhouse), Losing Louis (UK Tour), Bedroom Farce (UK Tour), The Tempest (Liverpool Playhouse), Beckett and What the Butler Saw (West End), Noises Off, Little Hotel On The Side and Rookery Nook (Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh), Happy Yet (Gate Theatre), Bodies (Live Theatre, Newcastle), Doctor Faustus, Frankenstein, Sauce For The Goose and On The Razzle (Nuffield Theatre, Southampton). Ben has also worked extensively with Alan Ayckbourn at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough: including Time of My Life, Absurd Person Singular, Communicating Doors, and Arrivals and Departures, (also 59E59 New York). TV includes: Survival of the Fittest, Manchild, Casualty, The Bill, Westbeach, Covington Cross, Crossroads, Side By Side, Hot Stuff. Film credits include: The Circle: Awakening, Rupert, Rupert and Rupert, School for Seduction, Young Blades.
JAMES BYNG (The Actor)
Theatre includes: The Woman in Black (Fortune Theatre, West End), Once Upon a Christmas (Kingswood House), Dr Who: Time Fracture (London), Casino Royale (Secret Cinema London & Shanghai), Romeo + Juliet (Secret Cinema), Moulin Rouge! (Secret Cinema), Noël (National Opera House, Ireland), Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Bargehouse, London), Dr Strangelove (Secret Cinema), Philip Pullman’s Grimm Tales (Shoreditch Town Hall), Carrie’s War (Novel Productions UK Tour), The History Boys (Leeds Playhouse/Theatre Royal Bath UK Tour), The Lord of the Rings (Theatre Royal Drury Lane, West End), Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure (Leeds Playhouse), Les Misérables (Palace Theatre, West End), Oliver! (London Palladium, West End), Hey! Mr. Producer (Lyceum, West End), Oliver! (Theatre Royal Plymouth). TV & Film includes: Patterns (Amazon Prime), Frenemies, Goodbye Mr. Chips (ITV), The Bike Thief, The Shot, Rupert Brockstein’s Blood Red Letters, A Leonard Cohen Afterworld, Potholing, Driving Through Snow, Harry’s Big Decision, Party Rings, The Paper Round. Radio includes: Over & Out (Dir. Toryn Westcott). Cast recordings include: Noël (Original Cast Recording), Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure, Hey! Mr. Producer, The Lord of the Rings (Original London Cast Recording).
The Creative Team
Director Robin Herford leads a creative team consisting of Michael Holt (Designer), Anshuman Bhatia (Lighting Designer), Sebastian Frost (Sound Designer), and Rob Mead (Original Sound Design).
Playwright Stephen Mallatratt (June 15, 1947 - November 22, 2004) wrote his early plays while working as an actor at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, ran by Sir Alan Ayckbourn. Several of these early plays were produced and directed by Ayckbourn, and commissions from other theatres followed. Comic Cuts was written for the Contact Theatre in Manchester and won the Thames TV Theatre Writers award, and after many regional British productions, culminated ten years later in the West End, retitled as The Glory of the Garden. In addition to original plays, he wrote adaptations of books for both TV
and theatre: including Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. His television work included The Innocents for YTV, and he adapted the Forsyte Saga for Granada. The Woman in Black ran for 34 years at the Fortune Theatre in the West End, and over a decade at the Rafael Solaria theatre in Mexico. It has been translated into at least 12 languages and performed at the last count in 41 countries.
Director Robin Herford read Philosophy and English at the University of St Andrews and trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Like Stephen Mallatratt, much of Robin’s early career was involved with Sir Alan Ayckbourn and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, first as an actor, then as Associate Director, and finally as Artistic Director, from1986 to 1988. He has appeared in the original productions of more Ayckbourn plays than any other actor, including the enormous 16-play two-hander Intimate Exchanges, both in Scarborough and London’s West End. He is often asked to direct Alan’s plays, and has notched up over 30 productions of them, in the UK and abroad. The Woman in Black, his most successful production, also started life in Scarborough. He commissioned the play and directed it in 1987, when he was running the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Transferring to the Fortune Theatre London’s West End, The Woman in Black played it for 34 years and has completed 12 UK tours. Directing, and occasionally performing in this play, has taken him, among other places, to Japan, USA, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.