‘2:22 — A Ghost Story’: Not Quite a Screaming Good Time

If your shrink likes to party as much as Lauren, a psychotherapist who is one of four characters in ‘2:22 – A Ghost Story,” a two-act piece by British comedy writer and performer Danny Robins now having its New York premiere, then I’d be concerned.One of a rash of horror-story plays to arrive in New York this year after successful runs across the Atlantic, “2:22” is set in a possibly haunted house in London where Lauren has arrived with Ben, her latest beau, to visit Sam, a college buddy who may have been more than a buddy. Regardless, Lauren is very chummy, or initially appears to be, with Sam’s wife, Jenny, who has just delivered their first baby.If a flood of mostly predictable scenarios is running through your head, it’s only fair to note that “2:22” ends with a twist that’s genuinely surprising and unsettling. Unfortunately, the rest of the show, running off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, is ridden with unconvincing details and irritating clichés, from the shock-heavy sound design (by Ian Dickinson for Autograph) to the way that Mr. Robins has crafted his characters and dialogue.Take Lauren — please. We’re supposed to believe she’s an accomplished, serious professional who was a classmate of Sam, a physics professor and insufferable snob. (We’ll get to him shortly.) It stands to reason that such a person would let her hair down among friends, but it’s a stretch to imagine her hooting and hollering and demanding a late-night booze run, as Lauren does, while visiting new parents, then proposing a game of truth or dare. She’s identified in the script as Californian; Mr. Robins may as well have written “dopey American.”“Hamilton” alumna Jasmine Cephas Jones, under the breathless direction of Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman, leans into this characterization, suggesting a giddy sorority sister more than a woman confronting hard choices, past and present, as she approaches middle age. Ms. Jones’s line readings are so frequently punctuated with little giggles that they begin to sound like ticks after a while.The goings-on in this staging are generally so boisterous, even without the screams that pop up out of nowhere, for various reasons, that you’ll wonder why Sam and Jenny’s baby ever stops crying. There’s loud, pulsing electronic music as time jumps ahead periodically — the action unfolds over 24 hours, beginning and ending at, natch, 2:22 AM — presumably intended to pump up the suspense, or to give audience members time to put in ear plugs.Between the bursts of noise, we learn that Sam met Jenny, a primary school teacher, at a refugee camp in Uganda. Ben, a builder with a strong London accent, is neatly positioned as the working-class bloke who is going to put Sam, a smug jerk who keeps making fun of the others’ fears and offering examples of his superior knowledge, in his place. Finn Jones, an English actor familiar to fans of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Netflix’s “Iron Fist,” makes Sam appropriately obnoxious, while Martin Marquez gamely plays the more rugged and sympathetic archetype presented in Ben. Film and television veteran Anna Camp brings at least a little more bite to the production as Jenny, whose role in the play is ultimately to sound off on the evils of gentrification.“We’ve been so…unkind…to the house,” Jenny laments, noting she and Sam never had problems before moving in and renovating the property. “We stripped it. Years and years of love and warmth…somebody else’s story! And we just pulled it all out.” She adds, in case we didn’t get the point, “I think it’s reacting against us.”If that’s the case, the house’s ultimate vengeance, or whatever the ending of “2:22” is meant to represent, may startle you, in a good way. But it’s too little, too late to make this mostly creaky thriller worth your time.

‘2:22 — A Ghost Story’: Not Quite a Screaming Good Time

‘2:22 — A Ghost Story’: Not Quite a Screaming Good Time

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