Theatre Review Uncanny - Fear Of The Dark with Danny Robins The London Palladium

Are you team skeptic or team believer? Last night had that slightly dreamlike London quality where the evening felt like it was unfolding in strange little layers of the unexplained. 

It began at the London Palladium for Uncanny Fear Of The Dark with Danny Robins, a show that sits somewhere between storytelling, theatre, and a spooky edge of the unexplained. The audience last night, 11th March at The London Palladium were completely drawn in. There’s something very human about sitting in a grand theatre with a few thousand strangers and collectively leaning forward into stories that make you laugh one moment and send a quiet shiver down your spine the next. The Palladium itself always does half the work for you. With its beautiful rich, velveted sense of history, its balconies glowing softly, pretty chandeliers hovering above the room, and you can’t help but think about all the performances and audiences that have passed through the same space before you. It makes the whole experience feel a little timeless, like you’ve stepped briefly outside ordinary life.

Uncanny Fear Of The Dark with Danny Robins is a show that is clever, and oddly very intimate despite the scale of the theatre. Robins has that ability to make you feel like you’re sitting in someone’s living room hearing strange late-night stories, except the living room happens to seat a couple of thousand people. The balance of humour and eeriness is what makes it work, just enough laughter to keep things light, but enough ambiguity that you walk out afterwards still turning things over in your mind. One of the most enjoyable parts of the evening was the audience questions. They were genuinely fun, curious, deep, sometimes slightly mischievous, and occasionally the exact question everyone in the room had secretly been wondering, but was relieved someone else asked out loud. Those moments added a lovely spontaneity and made the whole experience feel more like a shared conversation than just a performance. And all the way through, that central question hovering in the air…

Team Sceptic… or Team Believer?

For anyone who doesn’t know, Uncanny began as a hugely popular podcast and radio series created by Danny Robins, where ordinary people share their genuinely puzzling supernatural experiences. What makes it so compelling is that it never quite settles on an answer. Instead, each story becomes a sort of intellectual tug-of-war between explanation and mystery and the fan base around the show is clearly devoted. That dynamic is brought brilliantly to life on stage. Alongside Danny are two familiar voices from the podcast, Evelyn Hollow, firmly representing Team Believer, and Dr Ciarán O’Keeffe, holding the line for Team Sceptic. As each strange case unfolds they each approach it from completely different angles. Hollow open to the possibility that something genuinely paranormal may be happening, while O’Keeffe carefully pulls apart the evidence through psychology, science and rational explanation.

It’s part theatre, part storytelling, and part live debate and the tension between those perspectives is what makes it so entertaining. The audience clearly knew and loved the show. There was that wonderful fan energy in the room, the kind where people laugh at familiar moments, lean forward when the story gets eerie, and feel very much part of a shared community of listeners who have been following these strange accounts for years. By the end of the night I suspect the audience was still wonderfully divided.

Then the evening slipped into its second act.

A small after-show gathering at Mr Fogg’s Pawnbrokers, which feels less like entering a bar and more like wandering into a Victorian collector’s cabinet that someone forgot to lock. Every corner is filled with curiosities, strange artefacts, dim lighting, objects that look as if they might each have their own story. It’s the sort of place where conversations naturally drift and expand because the setting itself invites a bit of imagination. There was that lovely after-theatre energy in the room, people still half inside the world of the show, sharing reactions, laughing about moments that caught them off guard, and speculating about the stories. Those kinds of gatherings always feel slightly conspiratorial, as if everyone present has been let in on the same curious secret. What I liked most was the contrast of the evening, the grandeur of the theatre followed by the intimacy of a hidden, eccentric bar. Big stage to small room. Collective experience to smaller conversations. The sort of London night where the city quietly shows off its layers.

By the time I stepped back out into the street it had that particular late-night London feeling a little quieter, a little reflective and I realised the show had done exactly what good storytelling should do.

It lingered.

I walked away still thinking about the stories, the strange possibilities, and the simple pleasure of being pulled into a shared experience for a few hours. One of those evenings where you go out expecting entertainment and come home with something slightly more atmospheric, a mix of theatre, curiosity, laughter, and just a touch of the uncanny.

The tour dates continue here https://lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/uncanny-fear-of-the-dark/

Reviewer: Mary Fogg

Date: 11th March 2026