A GHOST IN YOUR EAR: In One and Out the Other – Review

Well, I’m 0-2 with these horror shows that have popped up in New York the past few weeks, having lost all the goodwill Broadway’s Paranormal Activity amassed throughout its first act after it dropped the spooky hijinks and decided to take itself seriously as a play. (About trauma, no less). The latest, A Ghost in Your Ear, seemed higher-concept but more direct in execution: the audience puts on headphones and straps in for auditory frights. Having loved Viola’s Room, last year’s sensory immersive, audio-forward experience at the Shed — and as a general fan of the genre — this promised to get me back on track. (All three of these, plus the upcoming 2:22 A Ghost Story, are UK imports, for those keeping score.)

Alas, alas…

Were this not a pre-existing transfer, I’d say A Ghost in Your Ear was a nifty scam by Audible, who runs the Minetta Lane and records each of their productions for later release: record a podcast and charge suckers to watch. But their noble project to preserve the theatrical word remains unvarnished.

The piece, written and directed by Jamie Armitage, is set at an audiobook taping overseen by sound technician Sid (Owen Campbell). The project’s voice-for-hire, Lucas (Lucas Iverson), is a few minutes late, but no worries; there’s plenty of time to record this slow-building tale about a man traveling to empty out his estranged father’s home following his death. 

It’s not so much that the story-within-the-play is a tired collection of haunted house tropes, but that the production as a whole betrays its premise in two major ways. The metatheatrical device of the recording studio, with the men’s light banter and “all in a day’s work” rapport, creates an expectation that their outside world will take some sort of precedence over the recording. It mostly does not, meaning we are simply listening to Lucas narrate the mediocre story. When it does, there is no reason to care about either of them as characters.

So the audio is the thing, then, right? Also no. Iverson has a great speaking voice, and his character has some fun with the ASMR-ness of the recording studio, which is rigged all over with microphones. But the spark wears off alarmingly fast — the concept of recorded sound not being exactly novel — and sound designers Ben and Max Ringham don’t accomplish, or really try, anything novel or exciting with the sensory medium. Even in-world, Lucas stops positioning himself in relation to the main mic, so his audio becomes tediously monophonic, and the sound effects which Sid adds are irrationally sparse.

All of the scares — and I could count them on exactly one hand — are visual. That figure is not arrived by me pretending to be above frights, but rather because they are deployed so anemically, each about 20 minutes apart in the 90-minute production, that you begin to monetize each one. That’s a losing battle: Anisha Fields’s recording studio set is lit in ghastly blue by Ben Jacobs, but the thrills are of the “lights go off, come back on and, wouldn’t you know it, something scary briefly flashes” variety. If that’s the name of the game, fine, but at least shake the coins out of our pockets with consistent, creative scares.

A Ghost in Your Ear is scheduled through December 12, 2026 at Minetta Lane Theatre on Minetta Lane in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.