The world of theater presents many challenges for actors, not the least of which is performing consistently in front of a live audience. For actor Ben Porter, an additional challenge was playing two roles during his month-long run in The Woman in Black at the CAA Theatre in Toronto.
Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from Susan Hill’s 1983 novel and directed by Robin Herford, “a lawyer obsessed with a curse that he believes has been cast over him and his family by the spectre of a Woman in Black, engages a sceptical 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.”
We talked with Porter about his performance in such an iconic stage production.
HGL: When did you realize you had a love for theater?
Ben Porter: I suppose very early on, but to be honest, I hadn’t seen that many plays when I first became an actor. I come from a town called Leicester, sort of in the Midlands. I’m not disparaging Leicester; it does have a theater, but culturally, I wasn’t going to the theater as a kid. When I did see a play through the school or something, it always blew me away.
I remember going to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the local theatre when I was quite young and seeing them do the mechanical scene, which is all the madcap comedy. I was high up in the theatre looking down on them, watching them do all this crazy stuff, and it just blew me away. To this day, I don’t know if they were any good or not, but I thought how it is possible for a human being to do all that, learn all that
Yeah, now I think I’m a theatre actor. It’s definitely my favorite thing to do.
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HGL: Let’s talk about your current play, The Woman in Black, which is playing here in Toronto. How did you land this role?
Ben Porter: Oh, it goes back a long way, really. The play itself, as you probably know, has been a bit of a cultural phenomenon; it recently just came out of the West End, where I believe it was on for about 33 years. It’s the second-longest play in the history of the West End, the first being The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, that has been going since the ’50s.
I knew all about it being a two-hander, with two actors. I’d seen it over the years, and in 2007, I got a job on a different play. But with The Woman in Black’s director, Robin Herford, a really wonderful director and a fantastic guy, he suggested I audition for The Woman in Black. I did, got the part, did that run in the West End, did a UK tour, then he asked me to do it again over the next few years, but I wasn’t available.
Then, in 2018, I went to see it. He said there’s a pub nearby, let’s go there, and he suggested cutting through the auditorium and the stage. When we got up there, he asked me if I remember it all, which I didn’t. He said the reason he did that was that he wanted to know if I would be interested in doing it in Luxembourg. The producers are outside; they need to know, so I said yes.
I thought that was it for my life in The Woman in Black, and so, an actor’s life, I was in France doing an opera. I got a call from Robin Helford. He said they were going to do it in America, not sure if they were going to use American or British actors. But if they go with British actors, would I be interested in playing it in New York? Like I was going to say no (laughs), so it all fell into place.
David Acton, who is in the version you see in Toronto, we did it off-Broadway, before and after COVID. That was the sort of launch of this North American thing, really.
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HGL: As the first actor in the history of The Woman in Black to play both Arthur Kipps and The Actor, how has this changed your usual preparation?
Ben Porter: Yeah, I had to learn two parts (laughs). They were talking about it as a potential, because the idea was that if I was playing the younger part and the older part, then you have one actor who only plays the younger part. So sometimes I’m acting with him and one actor who only plays the older part, and I’m playing off of him. Then you don’t need any understudies because the three of us, in effect, were covering each other, so it was a good idea.
Robin sort of decided that I could do it, I mean, it’s all very flattering, but he’s always felt you need two types of actors for it. Like a leading man to play the younger guy. Someone who is very comfortable in their own skin on stage. For the other part, that actor plays loads of characters, and so you need a character actor.
Because of the work I’d done, he saw me capable of doing both. I was in the right place at the right time, which is always the same with acting. But the fact that I’m the first actor to do that in 33 years is a bit mind-blowing. I think it’s just because Robin had this very set idea of certain actors for one part and certain actors for another part.
The challenge, I suppose, was learning that it was quite a big thing. It wasn’t too bad because I’d heard those lines so many times; it went in like osmosis. So I learned it fairly quickly, but there wasn’t a lot of rehearsal. We first did it with me playing that part in Princeton. We did three weeks in Princeton, and it was a bit nerve-racking because we’d had very little time to rehearse, but I gradually found my feet with it. Now I’m very comfortable playing both.
HGL: The Woman in Black is running for a month here in Toronto. As the performances go on, do you ever change things up depending on the vibe you get from the live audience, or do you stick with what works best for the show?
Ben Porter: Well, to a certain degree, you have to stick to what you are doing, structurally and hitting the beats of the story. Certain timings can’t be altered. But that is one of the joys of live theatre acting, that you respond to the audience. You can’t possibly do an identical performance every day. There are lots of things affecting you all of the time.
For example, the other day, we were in a place called Walnut Creek in California, we did three weeks, and a fire alarm went off. We have a lot of smoke in the show (laughs). For those who know the show, it’s set in a very eerie, marshy landscape with a causeway that crosses to a house, which is isolated. So, when you go to the house, you are cut off when the tide comes in. You can’t leave the house. It’s great horror stuff.
You are trapped, and there is a thing in Northern England, it’s called a fret, which is basically a sea mist, and it comes inland. So with this fret, we have a lot of smoke, and it has been known to set off fire alarms. You have to go out, reassemble and start again. Inevitably, the audience is so on your side it’s like, come on, we’re in this together.
When we first did this in New York, somebody took ill, unfortunately. We were in a very small venue, only about eighty seats. It was really intimate, which is great for The Woman in Black. When the individual took ill, I was in the middle of a monologue, quite a long speech. I had to stop because the show stopped, and somebody had to look after them for a bit. So I went off, came back on, and then the atmosphere had changed; it just became very concentrated, so it makes you very concentrated.
Also, somebody can say something really weird in the audience or scream at an odd moment, laugh strangely, you get a lot of nervous laughter. But yeah, that’s the fun of it, really.
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HGL: Once The Woman in Black finishes its Toronto run in January, what will you be doing next?
Ben Porter: I don’t know, actually. This job, this run, by the time we have finished it, this stint of it, it will have been four months. I don’t know yet, there’s enough time not to really worry about it yet. Thanks for mentioning it (laughs). No, it’s fine, I’ll be able to get a little bit of a rest after this, but who knows?
That’s the other thing about being an actor, sometimes you just don’t know. It’s kind of what you’ve signed up for, really.
The Woman in Black runs until January 4th, 2026, at the CAA Theatre in Toronto.
