On Theater:

Watching “The Woman in Black,” the latest production at the Costa Mesa Playhouse, is much like walking through a carnival fun house. You never know when something’s going to jump out and scare the bejabbers out of you.

Something often does, though not quite often enough, in Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of a 1983 novel by Susan Hill. This two-actor, several-character stage production is overstuffed with novelistic exposition, setting up the horrific moments to come.

Atmosphere, as much as effective performances, plays a tremendous role in this unsettling story, a mixed-bag directorial debut by Stephen Hulsey, who has had the good fortune of having sound designer John McQuay in his corner. McQuay’s eerie and stereophonic footsteps and horses’ hooves surround the audience, often eliciting an involuntary scream.

The setting is a small Victorian theater in England where a middle-aged solicitor has hired a professional actor to help him exorcise the ghosts of a terrifying past. This arrangement thrusts the actor into a strange scenario while the solicitor impersonates the other figures in his story.

In the Costa Mesa production, Jaycob Hunter delivers a viscerally haunting performance as the actor, reimagining the experiences of his patron, played in a deliberately low key by Ed McBride.

Hunter eases his audience through the complicated events leading up to the frightful moments, his performing skill easing the ennui created by playwright Mallatratt’s meticulous detailing of Hill’s ominous tale. When the terror manifests itself, primarily in the second act, Hunter erupts with maniacal fury.

McBride’s main character, the solicitor, is a different breed.

Stressing that he’s “not an actor,” he gropes his way through the early going before excelling in a series of supporting assignments assisting Hunter in his quest for details of an elderly widow’s lonely life in a spooky English marsh, reachable only at low tide.

What the actor uncovers cannot be detailed here, but McQuay’s tremendous sound effects, along with the ghostly lighting designs of Steve Endicott, play a vital role in the process. This is a particularly challenging technical project, skillfully realized by unseen backstage hands.

Endicott and his wife, Kathy, also have designed what appears at the outset to be a ramshackle setting but which intersects beautifully with the story line, in particular a locked door mysteriously opened to expose a further key to the mystery.

“The Woman in Black” may plod somewhat at the outset, but it will grab you by the throat before its story is completed in this harrowing production at the Costa Mesa Playhouse.

If You Go

What: “The Woman in Black”

Where: Costa Mesa Playhouse, 611 Hamilton St., Costa Mesa

When: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. through Nov. 22

Cost: $18 to $20

Call: (949) 650-5269