HAVING made her West End debut playing Jenny in this play, Lily Allen, at present drawing capacity houses to Bath’s Ustinov Studio playing the neurotic, emotionally strangled Hedda in a reworking of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, must be tempted to slip across to the Bristol Hippodrome to see Stacey Dooley, who also made her West End debut in the same role.

In common with one another, Hedda and Jenny are both women trapped in situations that they find intolerable caused by men who wish to have a controlling influence over them. In Jenny’s case it is pedantic middle class husband Sam, played by Kevin Clifton with who Stacey won the 16th series of Strictly Come Dancing. Arriving home from a business trip his analytical mind refuses to give any credence to Jenny’s story that during his absence, in the large suburban Edwardian house they have modernised, she has at 2.22.am each night heard through the monitor in their baby’s bedroom, a man crying in anguish.

Jenny is convinced that in modernising the old house they have disturbed the spirit of a previous owner who, grieving at the destruction, has returned to haunt them.

The sceptical Sam tries to explain everything away by logic, and was probably winning the battle until the arrival of guests Lauren (Shvorne Marks) Jenny’s oldest friend and Sam’s former mistress, and her blunt, plain-speaking, working class partner Ben (Grant Kilburn). As old feelings are dredged up things move to a climax when it is revealed that Ben is a medium and Sam is forced to agree to a seance. With lighting and sound designers Lucy Carter and Ian Dickenson given full range by co-directors Matthew Dunster and Gabriel Vega Weissman, things get completely out of hand ending in a fire which all but destroys the baby’s teddy bear.

But is it a malevolent spirit or vivid imaginations? With both sides still firmly entrenched in their beliefs at this stage author Danny Robins introduces a surprise twist in the story – but that must remain unrevealed. Despite some noble work from the lighting and sound teams, with sudden violent changes of vivid red lighting accompanied by a high pitched screech, which saw many in the audience leaping to attention, there was room for more tension and fear factor in the storytelling.

There were some lovely bits of ironic humour much enjoyed by an audience who gave the impression that they would have been equally happy had the play developed along the lines of a comedy thriller. That, however, was not the authors’ intention and when the time reached the witching hour of 2.22am. there was a further twist that left you in no doubt that Danny Robins had far more in mind than just writing a thriller, and had quite a few question to put to an audience about the occult and the reality of ghosts.

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