‘SCREAM if you want to clap harder” we are beckoned by this theatrical ghost story.

Audiences clearly are dying to be scared but producers don’t want to be, which is why this has been doing the rounds for 20 years. It’s certainly hugely popular – it has just begun a regional seven-month tour – and a worthy adaptation comes from the late Stephen Mallatratt of Susan Hill’s spooky spine-chiller.

The rafters are packed for what is essentially a twohander.

There is Arthur Kipps (Robert Demeger), a man desperate to tell his story, in order, he hopes, to sleep better and also The Actor (Peter Bramhill) whom he has hired to make the telling more palatable for an audience.

The pair make an unlikely double act, the nightmareridden old man and the enthusing luvvie, but they turn in a superbly scary show.

As well as offering a scream or three (especially from excitable schoolies let out for the night) the play is about the craft of acting. There are one or five jokes at Kipps’ expense early on, due to his laboured delivery, which changes, via a couple of hammy moments, into a first rate performance from a first rate actor. I personally tired of all this bad acting stuff, approximately five minutes before the majority of the audience did.

An audience says a great deal about its show. This lot were loud coughers, sweet wrapper-wrigglers and in one instance of mind-numbing stupidity listening to music. It was enough to turn anyone into a vengeance-bent harpie.

■ Until Saturday. Tickets 08448-112121 or at theatreroyal.co.uk

Sarah Scott