Theatre

Snake in the Grass

Dundee Rep

Four stars

Ghosts are very much in the house in Alan Ayckbourn’s 2002 play. The garden too for that matter. And the tennis court. Not to mention what might be lurking at the bottom of the well. This is something the two middle-aged sisters at the play’s centre must square up to when they are reunited in their childhood home following their father’s death.

High-flying Abigail is making a prodigal’s return after years of collapsed businesses and broken relationships while living abroad. This left her sister Miriam to tend to their now dearly departed dad while putting her own life on hold. Or so it seems. Only the old boy’s nurse Alice knows the full story, and she wants a cool hundred grand to keep it to herself.

What follows is a series of double bluffs, things that go bump in the night and daddy issues galore as what looks suspiciously like a case of accidental murder unfolds alongside a series of increasingly troubling true confessions.

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In Emily Winter, Deirdre Davis and Ann Louise Ross as Miriam, Annabel and Alice respectively, Andrew Panton’s revival gives three brilliant actresses at their peak the chance to relish the complexities of their characters.

As the cut glass politesse of their exchanges slip into something more venomous, it would be all too easy to ham it up. Winter, Davis and Ross, however, plumb the depths as they expose the damaged goods within on Jen McGinley’s sturdy garden set full of hidden horrors.

Ayckbourn originally wrote his play as an all female companion piece to his all male ghost play, Haunted Julia. Alongside a third piece, Life and Beth, these otherwise stand-alone works made up the Things That Go Bump trilogy.

Despite these female roots, an overriding maleness looms over the action. With the presence of the sisters’ father hanging heavy, Panton’s slickly realised production nevertheless makes for a prime time English horror story with plenty of bite.