CAROLINE Harker, who is at Salisbury Playhouse in a dark ghost story, The Croft, from 9th to 17th May, will be a familiar face to local audiences. Her previous appearances at the theatre have included Moira Buffini’s Maggie Thatcher-Queen Elizabeth II comedy Hand-Bagged, Alan Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking and Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking the Code.

Arriving in Salisbury after rehearsing The Croft in London, she was happy to be back at her old digs and at the theatre wIt brings back happy memories. hich has such a reputation for its warm atmosphere and expert backstage team. “It is lovely to be back here,” she says. “It’s really nice for actors. It’s very welcoming.”

Caroline is part of a remarkable theatrical family. She is the daughter of actors Polly Adams and Richard Owens, her sisters Suzannah and Nelly, are actresses, their great-great grandfather Joseph Harker was a famous set-designer. Born into a family with long theatrical connections, Joseph had nine children, who were all designers or artists and the tradition continued to his successors, including great-grand-daughter Polly, and on to the 21st century. Caroline is understandably very proud of this remarkably legacy.

Joseph Harker worked with Gilbert and Sullivan, and some of his paintings still hang at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Haymarket. It is said that Bram Stoker used his name for the hero of his famous gothic novel Dracula, Jonathan Harker.

This provides an unexpected spooky link to Caroline’s current role – The Croft is a modern horror story, set in a remote croft in the Scottish Highlands. The play, by Ali Milles, opened in 2020, but the Original Theatre production was halted by Covid, after touring to a handful of venues. It was then live-streamed.

Now, five years on, the tour resumes, starting at Salisbury, but with some tweaks after the gap. Caroline was a member of the original cast, and is returning to the same double role. The significant character of Enid, is played by the much-loved stage and screen actress Liza Goddard (the role was played by Gwen Taylor in the 2020 production).

The play is based on a true story from the Highlands. Two women arrive at the former crofters’ home in the deserted village of Coille Ghillie. Their weekend getaway takes an unexpected turn, and, cut off from the modern world, Laura and Suzanne find themselves drawn into the dark history of the croft and the lives that passed before them. The present is woven into the past as ancient tales surface and the truth that lurks in the old stone hut is revealed.

With a career that spans stage, television and film, Caroline’s CV ranges from Casualty to Slow Horses, from Andrew Davies’ famous 1994 TV adaptation of George Eliot’s Middlemarch to the recent ITV crime drama Joan, from Pride and Prejudice in Regents Park to The Railway Children at King’s Cross Theatre, and in film from Lady Godiva to The Madness of George, where she met her husband, actor Anthony Calf. The couple have three children, one of whom is a set designer … the story continues.

She was in six series of A Touch of Frost on television, and has appeared in many long-running soaps and dramas, including Foyle’s War, Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Holby City.

It is such a varied career – does she have any preference between screen and stage? “It’s whatever is happening at the time,” she says. “Filming takes a great deal of concentration. In the theatre you make a family.”

Thrillers – and The Croft with its haunted story and nail-biting tension is a real thriller – are quite hard work, she says. “You have to do it right. It has to be believable.”

Prepare to be taken back to some of Scotland’s darkest hours as 21st century women meet characters from a time before mobile phones and scientific explanations.

Salisbury Playhouse is the only West Country venue on the resumed Original Theatre tour of The Croft.