A good yarn can rest just as much in the recounting as it does in the plot. In two spooky, formally ambitious Off Broadway shows “A Ghost in Your Ear” and “The 4th Witch,” the story is inseparable from the storytelling — one does not work without the other.
“A Ghost in Your Ear,” written and directed by Jamie Armitage, takes place in the recording studio where Lucas (Lucas Iverson, who plays a med student on “The Pitt”) has come to tape an audio ghost story while his friend Sid (Owen Campbell, from the Ti West movie “X”) handles the engineering.
As the two men exchange light banter, Sid shows Lucas the capacities of the highly precise binaural microphone they are going to use. It is shaped like a head, with inscrutable features resembling those of an Easter Island statue. More important, the mic can create a surround sound that is piped into the headphones worn by audience members attending this Audible production, which is at the Minetta Lane Theater.
Making headphones part of the live experience is not new: Armitage, who co-directed “Six: The Musical,” acknowledges the influence of Simon McBurney’s 2015 show “The Encounter.”
Here the aural environment is used to transport both Lucas and us inside the story he’s reading out loud, which has to do with a man traveling to an isolated house to sort through his late father’s possessions. Key are the effects cooked up by the sound designer brothers Ben and Max Ringham (Tony nominees for “A Doll’s House” and “Prima Facie”). Voices murmur in your right ear while footsteps echo into the left one, or vice versa — the Ringhams have fun using our old friend, the stereo, to creep us out. And of course it’s all rather appropriate for a tale of apparitions and phantoms, those most disembodied of beings. (If you want more spectral action, the London import “2:22 — A Ghost Story” has a run this fall at the Lucille Lortel Theater.)
Yet “A Ghost in Your Ear” also feels timid in both form and themes. While the production is built on sound, the binaural capabilities feel underused, and the jump scares are visual (which will be a problem for Audible listeners down the line). And Armitage doesn’t fully exploit the idea of a story acquiring a life of its own, a familiar trope in the weird subgenre of fiction. The Peter Strickland film “Berberian Sound Studio” (2013) and the Paul Tremblay novel “Horror Movie” (2024) went much deeper into the terrifying powers of the very act of narration.
While “A Ghost in Your Ear” takes place during an audio recording, “The 4th Witch” (at NYU Skirball through Saturday) allows the audience to watch a movie as it is being made.
Conceived and directed by Drew Dir for the acclaimed Chicago company Manual Cinema, the wordless show is presented as a movie set in a war-torn country shuddering under attacks by a certain Macbeth. After her parents’ death in a bombing, a little girl finds refuge with a mysterious crone in Birnam Wood (another allusion to the Scottish play), where haunting dreams, freaky mushrooms and revenge fantasies — or perhaps it is real revenge? — are juxtaposed in eerie synergy.
This blurring of the lines is reflected in the production’s structure and aesthetics because Manual Cinema creates works out of light, darkness and the liminal space in between by interweaving shadow puppetry and live actors projected in silhouette. At times it’s almost impossible to know which is which. In some scenes, are we seeing a projection of the actress and the puppeteer Sarah Fornace as the girl or a puppet cutout? The story is also brought to life in view of the audience, which adds another layer. We can see the company members manipulate the marionettes or scramble in and out of the projection area, while on the other side of the main screen a three-piece band performs Ben Kauffman and Kyle Vegter’s score.
Manual Cinema’s unique approach to storytelling lends itself to mediums beyond theater. The company has collaborated with the music act Iron & Wine, and created two animated films for the Obama Presidential Center Museum. It also made a significant contribution to Nia DaCosta’s remake of “Candyman” (2021), helping to create what The New York Times review described as “a reflexive device that emphasizes that ‘Candyman’ is also fundamentally about storytelling.”
Such is the case with “The 4th Witch.” Even when I was unsure of what was happening with the plot, the way it came to life held my attention. Exposing the tricks of the trade does not make them any less potent.
A Ghost in Your Ear Through Dec. 12 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan; audiblexminetta.com. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.
The 4th Witch Through Oct. 17 at NYU Skirball, Manhattan; nyuskirball.org. Running time: 1 hour 5 minutes.
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