2:22 A Ghost Story: you'll be leaping out of your seats in Chichester

Jay McGuiness (The Wanted, BIG! The Musical, Rip It Up), Fiona Wade (Emmerdale, Silent Witness), George Rainsford (Call the Midwife, Casualty) and Vera Chok (Hollyoaks, Cobra) will take us through a night like no other.

Jenny believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam isn’t having any of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is getting closer as we count down to 2:22…

It’s a completely new cast to the cast you will have seen if you caught the show in Southampton last year. Vera, who will be playing Lauren, is looking forward to five months on the road with it.

“I didn't really know its reputation before I auditioned but after I got the role I went to watch (the previous cast) in Brighton and I think I just really wanted to see the audience response to the show. I had heard that it was an audience favourite and I just wanted to be part of that audience enjoyment. And it was fantastic. You could really sense the buzz and the excitement and sense the atmosphere.”

And no, Vera didn't see the ending coming either: “I really didn't expect the twist at all but the great thing is, as we rehearse, you realise there is just so much detail in it. A person who has watched it more than once will always be able to excavate more and more detail. You can enjoy it on your first watch and you can enjoy it just as much on your fifth watch but in terms of themes, I would say it's about connection. That's a big general statement but it's about connection with each other, about whether you believe in the afterlife. It's about love and connecting with people that you have lost and also about connecting with people in this world but you've also got the theme of gentrification and the theme of old friendships.

“I am the visitor Lauren. She is the husband's old, old friend, but I think really she just tries so hard to do the right thing and to fit in. She wants all the things that she perceives others to have like the husband, the house and the baby. I don't like the word gregarious but she is very loud but you do have to empathise with her. You have to think why she drinks. It's over-compensating for what she doesn't have. She is self-soothing. She is trying to survive but unfortunately it spirals.”

Vera has worked extensively in television and film but she also has a long history in theatre: “I started off doing theatre but I actually have not done theatre for the last few years. The last show I did was maybe before the pandemic. I was at The Globe recently but that was just for a one-night special. The last proper theatre in a theatre I did was pre-pandemic. During the pandemic I did some really exciting things with gaming technology and that was a combination of theatre and video gaming technology which was great to do but this is the first proper run in a theatre and I'm a little bit rusty. It's a physical thing and I do think that being a theatre actor is a little bit like being an athlete. You are really using a lot of physical and emotional energy, and the four of us are on the stage pretty much the whole time going through all these emotions. It really is a very compact intense rollercoaster.”