THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Minetta Lane Theatre, 19 Minetta Lane, West Village. (212) 307-4100.

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‘THE Woman in Black,” now at the Minetta Lane, might have served as a matinee treat for an English dowager in London for a day some 50 years ago.

It is now, in fact, in its 13th year in London and its seventh year in Mexico City. Adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from a book by Susan Hill, it’s a two-character piece (well, there’s a third apparition but she doesn’t speak) set in a theater and an old house.

An older man, one Arthur Kipps, has talked a young actor into playing the old man in a play he’s written in a theater he’s rented.

At first, the actor – who remains nameless – has the upper hand, since Kipps is a bad writer and ignorant of the theater. But soon the roles reverse and the actor becomes the bewildered young Arthur Kipps, who’s summoned to a remote house to settle legal matters when a woman has died.

At first, no one in the village will go near the house. Lightning flashes. A strange, disfigured, lady ghost pops up around the stage.

Could the house be infected by a dead woman who has lost her child and who wreaks vengeance on the children of any people foolish enough to encounter her? I must say no more!

This preposterous gibberish could be interesting only if somebody like Tom Stoppard got hold of it and turned it into a comment on the dead theatrical conventions of yesterday. As it is, forget it.

Directed with corny flashes of eeriness by Patrick Garland, “The Woman in Black” stars Keith Baxter, a talented actor who works hard, but in vain, to animate this stuff. The young actor is Jared Reed, a skilled and likable player stuck in this dreary, dull, utterly unthrilling melodrama.