IF a play is performed in the West End for 27 years, it is safe to say you are in for a gripping spectacle.

This is very much the case for Stephen Mallatratt's superbly effective adaptation of Susan Hill's supernatural thriller, The Woman in Black, which I was lucky enough to see in Bath's Theatre Royal on Monday.

I did not know a great deal about the play but from what I had heard, a spine-tingling evening lay ahead. One must always plan ahead in these things, so just in case, I brought an extra pair of trousers...

What makes this brilliant production, masterfully carried out by David Acton and Matthew Spencer, all the more potent and hair-raising is the fact that the ever-building suspense just keeps on rising.

There is nowhere to hide with just two actors taking on a multitude of roles, and Acton and Spencer do it with ease.

The play, directed by Robin Herford with assistant director Antony Eden, is a formula that provides audiences with a night of unremitting drama, theatricality and deception that effortlessly transports you into a chilling world from 100 years ago.

As the two men act out the horror, the lines between what is real and what is not is blurred as the past merges with the present in an eerie and riveting adventure.

It was safe to say I was not alone in my admiration for the play, that at times scared the bejesus out of me, as the audience were hopping all over the place out of fear.

When I left the theatre, after what was a fantastic evening of entertainment, I admit having the ghostly figure of the Woman in Black on my mind, not helped by my friend I went with trying to make me jump, the evil so and so.

I would recommend this to anyone, apart from young school children – as they would scream ... a lot.

RICHARD MILLS