Lucas Iverson and Owen Campbell Photo by Matthew Murphy

The play's conceit is fitting for a production by Audible, which specializes in audiobooks and spoken-word digital performances. Lucas (Lucas Iverson), a working actor, has been hired to record a story called "A Ghost in Your Ear" for a digital start-up company in London. His friend Sid (Owen Campbell) is the sound technician and is excited to try out the cutting-edge binaural recording capabilities that will enable the actor's voice along with acoustic effects to move among the listener's ears. A large dome microphone in the shape of a human head, which takes on chilling significance through the course of the play, serves as the conduit for the aural encounters.

Before the recording session begins, we learn a little bit about the two men in the recording studio. (Anisha Fields's set design is appropriately claustrophobic, and the glass panes separating both the audience and the sound technician from the sound booth contribute to the entrapment of the hapless actor.) Sid's wife is expecting a child–a boy–and Lucas admits to having no aspirations to be a parent. Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the story Lucas has been brought on to record revolves around father-son relationships.

As the recording proceeds, the ghost of the story begins to manifest itself in the sound booth. At first, the mishaps seem accidental, but they become increasingly perilous. Additionally, Sid's complicity in the spectral visitation becomes more and more suspect. More shall not be said.

Written and directed by Jamie Armitage, A Ghost in Your Ear has neither the quantity nor quality of jump scares as a play such as Paranormal Activities, and the supernatural explanation behind the horrifying apparition isn't entirely satisfying. Still, the show is riveting for most of its 90-minute runtime. This has a good deal to do with the production elements, especially the sound design by Ben and Max Ringham (who also collaborated with Armitage).

Listening to the play through headphones is akin to experiencing a high-tech radio show with a spot-on digital Foley artist providing the immersive sound effects. Every vocalization and ambient sound is crucial to the atmosphere Armitage and the Ringhams have created. The lighting by Ben Jacobs, which heightens the mood with eerie fluorescents and well-timed blackouts, adds to the evening's impressive visual theatricality.

Yet, what makes the evening so memorable, and dare I say, haunting, is the sensational Off-Broadway debut by Iverson. Campbell is a good counterpoint in the rather thankless role of Sid, but he wisely avoids distraction while Lucas's largely uninterrupted monologue progresses. Iverson beautifully warms into the role of the audiobook narrator. At first, he is merely an actor plying his "Juilliard-trained" skills in assuming the various characters within the story, but he progressively becomes subsumed by the horrors as well as the presumably cursed objects in the room. For instance, his character initially treats the head-shaped dome microphone as an amusing novelty, much like testing out the features of a new Alexa or Google Assistant. Gradually, the device takes on human-like properties, and Iverson brilliantly reveals the seductiveness and revulsion the object causes.

Moreover, the prison-like recording studio successively takes on the qualities of a torture chamber, and Iverson subtly reveals the psychological toll it takes as if he is both the narrator and character of an Edgar Allan Poe story. This is a performance that demands to be both heard and seen.

The preshow instructions for A Ghost in Your Ear state, "If at any moment, you are too scared, simply remove your headphones and the voices will disappear." Long after I left the headphones on the back of my seat in the theatre, I have not been able to get Iverson out of either of my ears.