Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw has been numerously adapted for the stage since it was first published in 1898. Of these, perhaps the most famous versions are Benjamin Britten’s 1954 opera and The Innocents (1950), directed by Harold Pinter, which became a famous 1961 film starring Deborah Kerr. More recently, the story influenced the tone, style and content of the 2001 film The Others. It is, on one hand, a simple ghost story: an unnamed governess, who narrates the tale, is engaged by a mysterious guardian to teach and care for his orphaned niece and nephew, Flora and Miles, at Bly, an isolated, near-empty country house. After the apparently angelic Miles is expelled from boarding school for unclear reasons, the Governess begins to see a shadowy woman and man in the grounds of the house. Other strange goings-on convince her that these figures are the malevolent spirits of two employees who died in mysterious circumstances and have returned to haunt and take possession of the children: Peter Quint, a dissipated valet; and his lover, Miss Jessel, the former governess.

While adhering to the basic conventions of the ghost story, the novella sows doubt and the Governess becomes as increasingly unreliable narrator, as her concern and protectiveness begin to resemble paranoid obsession. The sceptical can thus envisage the ghosts as manifestations or projections of the Governess’s disavowed, obsessive desires. Her acute concern that the dissolute Quint is corrupting Miles is matched by her own confusion about the boundaries between maternal and erotic love, while her disgust at Miss Jessel’s sexual adventuring barely conceals her own longings. The children claim not to see the ghosts, although in the novella and on stage their malign presence is palpable. The story is darkly, richly evocative and ambivalent; hence the continued reworkings and adaptations. James adroitly exploits adults’ concerns about protecting children, implying that carers inadvertently contaminate and warp their charges. The story uneasily blurs the boundaries between love and obsession, care and control, and, in the famous, haunting final scene, the Governess’s protective urges lead her to literally smother Miles.

The most recent stage adaptation was penned by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and performed at the Almeida in 2013. Lenkiewicz is most famous as the first female author of an original play staged on the National Theatre’s largest stage – the Olivier. This was Her Naked Skin (2008), performed by Tower in 2011, which tells the story of the struggle to extend universal suffrage to women and the cross-class love affair between two suffragettes, Lady Celia Cain and Eve, a machinist. Some critics received the Lenkiewicz version of The Turn of the Screw unenthusiastically; she was criticised for ramping up the Freudian undertones of repression, hysteria and Oedipal sexuality at the expense of the source material’s subtlety and suggestiveness. She was also faulted for opting for The Woman in Black style thrills and shocks, including writing appearing on blackboards and the ghosts peering in at windows or appearing suddenly in the night. Lenkiewicz pursues several of the themes she explores in Her Naked Skin : the risks and accompanying vulnerabilities of love; the struggle to balance and fulfil potentially competing or incompatible desires and needs in a relationship; love that is deemed inappropriate at best or immoral and criminal at worse; and the difficulty of communicating and relating across affiliations of class, gender and sexuality. Lenkiewicz is particularly alert to the power dynamics of Edwardian Britain and the Governess in The Turn of the Screw, like Eve in Her Naked Skin, chafes against the restrictions of her class and gender and the humiliations of being doubly disregarded as a working-class woman.

Some of the perceived faults of the Lenkiewicz version make for fantastic theatre; the Gatehouse audience I was part of delighted in the shocks and melodramatic, gothic intensity. In a well performed and genuinely frightening moment, which made several audience members scream, Quint suddenly, suggestively rises up out of the Governess’s bed. Emily Carmichael impresses as the Governess, skilfully conveying the character’s disintegration from a guarded, efficient and well-meaning carer to a paranoid obsessive who inflicts on her charges the damaging possessiveness she espies in the ghosts. Carmichael is frighteningly convincing in her portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, imbuing her performance with an urgency that conveys the Governess’s belief in the malignant reality of the ghosts. Alison Liney is also strong as the housekeeper Mrs Grose, depicting her as a no-nonsense domestic servant whose plain-speaking and weary scepticism begin to slip into confusion and doubt. Eliza and Isaac Insley, impressively making their third appearance for Tower, are a creepy delight as Flora and Miles. Both sustain the audience’s ambivalence about the children; they are, in turn, affectionate, precocious, demanding, enraged and frightening. Nicolas Holzapfel and Nina Tolleret strikingly convey the frightening longing of the ghosts without speaking a word. Martin South directs this complex piece with confidence, ensuring that the nerve-wracking tension is generally sustained. The tricks and chills are handled well, although there were some forgivable, minor mishaps when I saw the production. Audience members on the left and right side of the theatre did miss some of the frightening effects, so a little more attention to sightlines would have been beneficial. As noted by reviewers of the Almeida production, this adaptation occasionally lacks depth of tone and characterisation, while the abrupt transitions between sensational horror and drawing-room drama occasionally jar. Colin Guthrie has created a notably eerie sound design and Victor Craven’s noteworthy video design is an innovation I hope to see in future Tower productions. Special mention must go to the hard-working crew, who handle the demanding scene changes well. In all, this notable cast work hard within the adaptation’s limitations to sustain a taut ambivalence and suspenseful atmosphere of dread.