Brenda Blethyn and Niall Buggy

Edna O'Brien's Haunted starts off as a fairly anodyne, wistful comedy about aging and the male desire to have one last fling. Middle-aged, Shakespeare-loving Quincy Berry (Niall Buggy) has an unannounced visit from a young woman, Hazel (Beth Cooke), who he forms an immediate attachment to. He tells Hazel that his wife (Brenda Blethyn) is dead, and then proceeds to gradually give her the contents of Mrs Berry's wardrobe.

The first act ambles along fairly unremarkably. The lines might raise a polite smile ("you've always cried - that's one of your weapons" is a good average). One of the play's quirks is that all the characters quote Shakespeare (we get the Hamlet quote about baked meats furnishing the funeral and wedding banquets twice). And the characters also recite a fair amount of poetry; unfortunately one of my worst vices is that when characters in plays start reciting poetry I switch off completely.

Mr Berry is presented as a hopeless liar/fantasist in the Irish tradition. His wife is reliably played by Blethyn in a variation of Cynthia in Secrets and Lies - even down to the slight quiver in her voice. She works in a doll factory, and a sample of her handiwork sits on a plinth in the middle of the room. Her career, and choice of interior decoration, is explained later when we learn she had no children, but did have a miscarriage earlier on in the marriage.

There's a trip down to Whitstable which didn't make much sense to me - Mr Berry and Hazel look out a window and see lots of ghost children, I think. But as this followed on from a bout of poetry, my mind was probably wandering.

My mind certainly didn't wander for one spectacular scene where everyone decided to crank up the insane-o-meter to dangerously high levels. Mrs Berry confronts her husband with Hazel and then actually shouts at him "Fie on you - adulterer! traitor!", before physically attacking him and then giving a great display of sobbing-acting which goes on for so long you begin to think maybe it's covering for someone forgetting their lines. A door opens, some magic light shines through it, and Mr Berry stretches his arms out yearningly towards it. I was keeping my fingers crossed for the doll to start levitating and shoot laser beams out of its eyes but sadly this never happened.

I'm willing to accept that maybe me and this play don't operate on the same wavelength. Perhaps it was too symbolic/poetic/barking for my tastes. After all the Guardian has praised it as a "beguiling memory play of subtle and elusive beauty". If you've always wanted to see a play which was Southern Gothic meets Coronation Street you're probably in for the theatrical experience of your life.

Continues until Saturday 6.

To book tickets visit:
www.ambassadortickets.com/1507/664/Brighton/Theatre-Royal-Brighton/Haunted