Tacoma Little Theatre is doing all the right things when it comes to striving to bring ticket buyers through the doors. Not only is it staging shows folks want to see during the regular season, but it’s bringing off-season shows during its wee hours to tap into the after-hours energy found around Tacoma these days.

Such is the case with its Halloween offering. The theater is staging a ghost story adapted by Stephen Mallatratt from the book by Susan Hill. The action is directed by John Munn — as he comes off his run of Mousetrap at Lakewood Playhouse.

The TLT show, The Woman in Black, is a grinding, suspense thriller that centers on the story of Arthur Kipps, who has hired an actor to help him tell a tragic story about his childhood. He wants to tell his family about a ghostly encounter the most effective way he knows how in hopes that his telling of the story to the next generation will purge his mind of the experience and the barrage of nightmares it has created for him through the years.

The story is told by two actors playing all the roles with a largely bare stage — so audience members can concentrate on the story in its raw form.

“This is like the best Twighlight Zone episode you ever saw, but it is on stage with live actors,” director John Munn said, noting that Woman in Black is the second longest show in London’s theater history, next to Mousetrap. He also directed this show 13 years ago at Burien Little Theatre during the final days of his acting troupe Last Ditch Efforts.”It is a work out for the actors. It really is. The London cast changes actors every six months and I can see why,” says Munn.

Through the show’s 51-page script, the audience runs through a series of locations, from a church and graveyard to a train, a house and an office — all courtesy of sound cues and actor actions instead of scenery and props.

Telling too much more about the show would give away some of the intrigue, so there the description will end. It is safe to point out, however, that the show is TLT’s latest effort in second stage offerings, with this show running later than usual Fridays and Saturdays to get the night owl audiences in the theater. The show runs at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays and at 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 1.

Also not to be missed at the theater is Lend Me a Tenor, by Ken Ludwig, which tells the story of Saunders, the general manager of the Cleveland Grand Opera Co. in the mid 1930s as he waits for one of the greatest tenor performances of the era only to have comedy step in instead. This is a comedy of shorts that produced a chuckle or two but really could have gone over the top with its mad-cap antics and a parade of misunderstandings and misidentifications. The set had six doors for crying out loud. There needed to be at least one or two scenes where the doors slammed faster than a trumpet at a Miles Davis concert. But alas, that had to wait until the last scene of the show as a creative way to get the actors in place for curtain call.

[Tacoma Little Theatre, The Woman in Black, through Nov. 1, Thursday 7:30 p.m., Friday-Saturday, 10:30 p.m., $15, 210 N. I St., Tacoma, 253.272.2281]

[Tacoma Little Theatre, Lend Me a Tenor, through Nov. 8, Friday-Saturday 7:30 p.m., Sunday 2 p.m., $16-$24, 210 N. I St., Tacoma, 253.272.2281]