In new poltergeist thriller The Enfield Haunting,

Catherine Tate is to return to the West End stage in a new psychological thriller.

The Queen Of Oz star will appear opposite  David Threlfall in The Enfield Haunting, based on a famous poltergeist event.

In August 1977, single parent Peggy Hodgson called police to her council house claiming she had witnessed furniture moving and that her children had heard knocking sounds on the walls. 

Over a period of 18 months, more than 30 people, including neighbours, paranormal investigators and journalists, said they saw heavy furniture moving of its own accord, objects being thrown across a room and the sisters seeming to levitate several feet off the ground. However skeptics believe it to have been a hoax that got out of hand.

Tate said of her new role as Peggy: ‘I’m thrilled to be part of The Enfield Haunting and can’t wait to start working with the first-class creative team and the brilliant David Threlfall.’

The show has been written by Casualty co-creator  Paul Unwin, who said: ‘Before Guy Lyon Playfair, the poltergeist expert died in 2018, I spent a long afternoon with him in his basement flat in Earls Court.

‘He and Maurice Grosse had spent months with the Hodgson family trying to protect them, but also make sense of what was going on. What Guy told me was terrifying.

‘So much of what appears to have happened was impossible to fake and yet at the centre of the whole thing were real people trying to make sense of their lives. The Enfield Haunting is a psychological ghost story. It is a ghost story for now.’

Directed by Angus Jackson, The Enfield Haunting will play at Brighton Theatre Royal and Richmond Theatre before moving to The Ambassadors Theatre in the West End from November 30 to March 2.  Tickets are  available here.

As Chortle reported yesterday, Tate’s Queen Of Oz has shed two-thirds of its audience since it began four weeks ago, according to overnight viewing figures.

Published: 13 Jul 2023