This autumn, NeuNoir theatre presents, The Listener, an intimate reading of a chilling tale by one of the 20th century’s greatest supernatural storytellers, Algernon Blackwood – with stop-offs in Nottingham (27 Oct 2026); Worcester (30 Oct 2026); Stourbridge (31 Oct 2026); Birmingham (1 Nov 2026);and Coventry (17 Dec 2026).
Having spent a year hunting for affordable accommodation, a struggling writer chances on cheap rooms in a quiet central London cul de sac. Quickly signing a year long lease without questioning why the cost is so low, they soon discover the real price is far higher than they expected …
Told using diary entries over a three month period, the lodger describes how their initial elation at finally finding somewhere to live slowly turns to unease and eventually fear.
Are they really alone in their cold isolated ramshackle dwelling?
Drawing on the author’s own experiences of loneliness and poverty, The Listener taps into a myriad of contemporary themes, from isolation and wellbeing, to the wider challenges of homeworking and the housing crisis.
Algernon Blackwood was one of the most influential and popular supernatural fiction writers of the 20th century. A writer, storyteller, playwright, paranormal investigator and broadcaster, his work featured in numerous early BBC radio and TV programmes, and unlike many of his peers he was no sceptic, claiming all his ghostly stories were “more or less autobiographical”.
Born in 1869, in London, Blackwood skipped through a variety of careers (including journalism), before a friend presented some of his short stories to a publisher without his consent – a move that lead to the publication of The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories collection in 1906, and The Listener the following year.
Although Blackwood went on to write everything from children’s books to a musical (with Elgar), it was his ‘strange stories’ – tales of the supernatural and weird, often filled with a quiet dread and informed by folklore, the mystical and Nature – which gripped the public’s imagination, earning him the well-earned nickname, ‘The Ghost Man’.
Among his most famous works are The Wendigo, The Willows and Ancient Sorceries (featuring occult detective John Silence). Such stories lay the foundations for modern horror, inspiring everyone from HP Lovecraft to Stephen King.
Read by NeuNoir regular Richard Usher (Sweet Cherry Publishing’s Sherlock Holmes audiobook series – and no relation to Roderick), The Listener is the Midlands-based company’s sixth production, following WH Hodgson’s Carnacki: The Ghost Hunter (2021), EF Benson’s The Outcast (2022), MR James’ Casting The Runes (2023), Bram Stoker’s The Judge’s House (2024) and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher (2025).
NeuNoir presents Algernon Blackwood’s The Listener visits Bromley House Library, Nottingham (27 Oct 2026); Greyfriar’s House and Garden, Worcester (30 Oct 2026); Stourbridge Town Hall, Stourbridge (31 Oct 2026); and Birmingham Back To Backs (1 Nov 2026); plus London Road Cemetery, Coventry (17 Dec 2026).
For more information, see: neunoir.wordpress.com
LISTINGS
Suggested categories: Stage / Theatre / Literature / Halloween
NeuNoir presents:
Algernon Blackwood’s The Listener
Tuesday 27 October 2026
Bromley House Library, Angel Row, Nottingham NG1 6HL
3.30pm & 7pm. Tickets: £10 (£9 members)
Tel: 0115 947 3134
bromleyhouse.org
Friday 30 October 2026
Greyfriars House & Garden, Friar Street, Worcester WR1 2LZ
6pm & 8pm. Tickets: £15
Tel: 01905 23571
nationaltrust.org.uk/greyfriars-house-and-garden
Saturday 31 October 2026
Stourbridge Town Hall, Wollaston Studio, Crown Centre, Crown Lane, Stourbridge DY8 1YE
7.30pm. Tickets £10
Box Office: 01384 812812
boroughhalls.co.uk
Sunday 1 November 2026
Birmingham Back To Backs, 55-63 Hurst Street/ 50-54 Inge Street, Birmingham B5 4TE
5.30pm & 7.30pm. Tickets: £10
nationaltrust.org.uk/birmingham-back-to-backs
Thursday 17 December 2026
Anglican Chapel, London Road Cemetery, Coventry CV1 2JT
7pm. Tickets: £15
www.historiccoventrytrust.org.uk
Booking fees may apply.
Suitable for ages 14+.
ABOUT NEUNOIR
NeuNoir is a Midlands-based theatre company. Delving into the darker corners, the company’s productions include readings of Carnacki: The Ghost Finder (an equine adventure featuring WH Hodgson’s early 20th century supernatural detective Thomas Carnacki); EF Benson’s eerie tale of reincarnation, The Outsider along with The Thing In The Hall; the classic Casting The Runes, by the master of the genre, MR James; The Judge’s House, a haunted house chiller from Dracula creator, Bram Stoker; the 19th century Gothic masterpiece, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe; and the creepy The Listener by 20th century writer Algernon Blackwood, aka The Ghost Man.
For more information, see: neunoir.wordpress.com
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Facebook: Neu NoirABOUT ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
Dubbed ‘The Ghost Man’ by the press, Algernon Henry Blackwood CBE (14 March 1869 to 10 December 1951) is one of the greatest supernatural fiction writers of the 20th century.
Reportedly basing many of his stories on personal experience, or those of his close friends, he led a colourful life. From schooling in England, Scotland, Switzerland and Germany, he worked in farming and hotels in Canada, journalism and banking in the US, and was also an artist’s model, violin and language teacher, morphine addict (briefly), and even an undercover agent during The Great War.
Blackwood held a lifelong love of nature and travel. From sneaking out into the garden as a child at night, to embracing the wilderness of North America as a 20-something, he relished canoeing in Europe, and continued to enjoy ski trips to the Alps into his 70s. Also fascinated by the esoteric, he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (whose number also included such famed writers as WB Yeats, Edith Nesbit, Aleister Crowley and Arthur Machen), and the Society For Psychical Research, and it’s these two interests – Nature and the esoteric – which inform much of his work.
A prolific writer, he reportedly penned some two hundred short stories and over a dozen novels, as well as an autobiography (Episodes Before Thirty), while his children’s book A Prisoner In Fairyland, was adapted into the stage musical The Starlight Express with Violet Pearn and composer Edward Elgar. Among those who championed his work were such distinguished scribes as HP Lovecraft and Henry Miller.
An early example of his writing, The Listener was first published in Blackwood’s second collection of short tales, The Listener and Other Stories (1907). Atmospheric, dark and claustrophobic, the tale finds a would-be writer struggling in a drafty ramshackle London property, distracted by strange scurrying sounds and an indescribable odour …
A gifted and natural storyteller, Blackwood – and his stories – became a regular fixture on BBC radio from the late-1920s onwards, and when BBC TV launched in 1936, he was one of the first guests. He continued to grip radio and TV audiences with his tales of the strange, ghostly, supernatural and weird for the rest of his life. His spooky ‘disappearance’ during a 1947 Halloween TV broadcast (a pioneering example of televised trickery) famously confounded viewers who jammed the BBC switchboard demanding to know what had happened to the elderly ‘Ghost Man’.
Blackwood’s final TV appearance was fittingly on Halloween 1951. He died two months later.