Written 14 years ago, Haunting Julia marked the first occasion in which Alan Ayckbourn, having explored the possibilities of making us laugh, then of making us despair, decided to see if he could make us jump.
It seemed a significant departure, being a taut, three-handed single-act drama that revealed Ayckbourn's fascination for spooky old potboilers such as Gaslight and the Woman in White. It was also, uncharacteristically, a play with no female parts, though it is the lingering presence of the absent heroine that truly dominates the evening.
Julia Lukin was a young composer of prodigious gifts - dubbed "Little Miss Mozart" by the press - who mysteriously took her own life at the age of 19. Her grief-stricken father Joe honours her memory by establishing an exhibition centre, whose most macabre feature is a precise recreation of the student flat in which Julia died. More macabre is the fact that she still appears to be living in it.
Though the original production featured some stunning spectral interventions, it never quite eradicated the suspicion that Ayckbourn's delight as a technician had overridden his instincts as a playwright.
Richard Derrington's revival features two fine actors returning to the roles they created 14 years ago - Ian Hogg as Joe and Adrian McLoughlin, as the unreliable psychic he employs, develop the darker recesses of the material until it appears less a sensational entertainment than an overwhelming study of obsessive grief. Richard Stacey has great impact as a sceptical former boyfriend, coerced into taking part in the bizarre seance. Haunting Julia is still scary, but now it makes you jump and think at the same time.
· In rep until August 30. Box office: 01723 370541.
