Night Must Fall: York Theatre Royal

OLD stage thrillers can be more creaky than creepy. It's a form not much in favour with modern playwrights so you worry that this classic thriller by Emlyn Williams, which dates from 1935, will be not so much a whodunnit but a why-did-they-bother-to-do-it-at-all.

Happily, the production works. We know, or at least think we know, the guilty party from quite early in the proceedings after a murder hunt is launched. Eventually a body is found – minus the head – near the isolated bungalow in the Essex woods where sour-faced, wheelchair-bound old bat Mrs Bramsom rules the roost.

Enter young baby-faced Dan, a real charmer who's got the maid pregnant, had a fling with the dead woman and is soon wheedling his way into Mrs Bramson's good books. He even exerts a spell over her uptight dogsbody Olivia who responds eventually with that old trick of taking off her glasses and letting down her hair.

But Dan is a man of many moods and not all of them pleasant, as Will Featherstone's subtle, mesmerising performance shows. He's a psychopath, sociopath, schizophrenic or perhaps all three. He's certainly troubled and that heavy, locked hatbox he carries around would make an ideal container for his victim's head.

Williams' play still works because it's a psychological thriller. Luke Sheppard's slick production plays it dead straight with Gwen Taylor asking for (and getting) no sympathy as horrid Mrs Bramson and Daragh O'Malley plodding around as a deceptively casual detective.

* Runs until Saturday. Box Office: 01904-623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

Steve Pratt