The Ghost Caller review: Headlong's lockdown-proof audio play gives an eerie glimpse into the future

It will be 10 years in May since David Morrissey trod the boards as Macbeth at the Liverpool Everyman, his formative teenage stomping ground. Now he has attached his name and voice to a work that was to have been performed (in/ outdoors) at St Luke’s – known in the city as "the bombed-out church" (a casualty of the 1941 blitz) – as part of a cluster of new playlets.

Owing to the restrictions of Tier 3 it was reconceived as an audio monologue, deliverable by mobile-phone, making it lockdown-proof. If you’ve ever wanted an A-list actor to have a quick word in your ear, now is your chance.

It’s not only Morrissey who’s taking part. Leanne Best, fellow Liverpudlian actor (and, note-worthily, the niece of the Beatles’ drummer Pete), has also contributed. In fact, it’s a toss-up as to who you hear once you’ve keyed in the number supplied by Headlong theatre company (whose associate artistic director Holly Race Roughan, directs this).

There is, maybe, a chauvinism to the way the heads/tails choice – arrived at after a series of text prompts – plays out. Heads elicits a pre-recorded call from Morrissey’s "ghost" (at least it did for me, and I triple-checked). That could be cause for feminist indignation but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a cheap thrill from hearing that familiar voice – heavy, measured, confidential. A spine-tingling sensation? Not so much.

The decision, dare and limitation of the script, penned by Luke Barnes, is to eschew an old-fashioned yarn, and instead issue something like a series of instructions - prompts for quiet soul-searching. We’re not so very far from Macbeth – where the supernatural revenant is a manifestation of inner perturbation, a conscience pricked and tormented.

“I’m asking you to think of your ghost – the person you want to call but you can’t because they’re not here,” the caller intones. It’s incredibly direct and personal, yet weirdly off-hand: “I am your mum, your dad, your grandparents, your brother, your sister…I died of cancer, I jumped off a bridge, I was in a car crash... I was old - I died in my sleep”. Best tackles the material in a lighter, faster manner but the effect is the same: ghoulish and queasy-making even if the thrust is an invitation to let go, move on. It’s striking that a follow-up text provides a contact for bereavement counselling.

While I had misgivings about the message, the medium itself deserves being adopted more widely during the pandemic. Even if a sense of isolation is intensified on this occasion, the format – especially when achieved live - has the capacity to cut through our solitude. In-yer-earhole entertainment dates back to the 19th century: the théatrophone system, relaying live performances, was a hit in France (Proust was a fan), with subscribers across Europe – Netflix avant la lettre. With many of us missing theatre and suffering a deficit of companionship, perhaps it’s time to dial M for mainlined fabulation.

Details for The Ghost Caller will be available via Headlong.co.uk until Nov 12. Part of a national creative initiative by touring companies Signal Fires: signalfires.co.uk