Henry James invented the modern novel, but he was a woeful dramatist. Recent novels by Colm Toibin and David Lodge have both focused on the fiasco of James's epic, Guy Domville, which failed to challenge Oscar Wilde's pre-eminence on the London stage.
The irony is that the novella James wrote partly to assauge the memory of this disaster has proved to be his most enduring stage work. It leads you to wonder whether we need another version. But if it's at the hands of the team that created The Woman in White, the answer is: yes.
Director Robin Herford and designer Michael Holt have been responsible for terrifying West End audiences for 15 years, yet the secret of The Woman in White's success is the simplicity of its staging. Here Holt and Herford revisit the formula with the same hair-raising results.
Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation condenses the book into a duologue, with one male and one female actor assuming all the parts. It's theatrically satisfying but also astute - one possible reading of James's story is that the narrative becomes the projection of a deeply repressed woman. Hatcher's two-handed concept is a psycho-sexual pas de deux in which the predatory male characters morph into one.
Ian Targett adapts to the demands of shifting between stern employer, garrulous housekeeper and disturbed infant. But the focus is held by Alexandra Milman's milk-white governess, whose guileless features gradually contort into something more disturbingly malign.
Herford's 90-minute production keeps the action compressed, turning the screw about as tight as it will go without losing the thread.
· Until April 2. Box office: 0161-624 2829.
