IF you go down to the woods today, you will find Luke Sheppard's revival of Emlyn Williams's 1935 psychological thriller, the one filmed twice more than 50 years ago but pretty much estranged from the stage these days. Although ex-pat Aussie Jason Donovan did pop up in a 1996 production at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, floating between a Welsh and Irish accent apparently.

He was playing Dan, the homicidal, schizophrenic, creepy yet alluring hotel bellboy, first performed by Williams himself and here in the kinetic hands of Will Featherstone, who has such a spark about him, you could use him to strike a matchbox.

Dan has swanked his way into the secluded Essex woodland bungalow of grande dame Mrs Bramson (Gwen Taylor), a hypochondriac, poisonous-tongued vixen. She has no phone, no manners, no friends, a truculent cook (Mandi Symonds' Mrs Terence), and a shrewish but bright and arty, if impoverished niece, Olivia (Niamh McGrady), who she treats no better than the somewhat simple young maid Dora (Melissa Vaughan) she bullies. Dora is already under lively lad Dan's spell, pregnant after a one-night stand that has led Mrs B to demand the bellboy should do his duty by her.

Meanwhile, a woman has gone missing from the hotel; Inspector Belsize (Daragh O'Malley) and the police are digging up Mrs B's garden. Olivia has her suspicions – what could be inside his locked hat box, she wonders – but nevertheless she finds herself far more drawn to dangerous Dan, the chameleon psycho, than pipe-smoking, tweed dullard Hubert (Alasdair Buchan), whose forlorn marriage proposals she blithely bats away.

By now Dan has wheedled his way into Mrs Bramson's affections, spotting his chance to be the son she never had as he tends on her every need and whim to her suddenly girlish response, but is it all an act, as tart-tongued Olivia suspects?

Director Sheppard, designer David Woodhead, lighting designer Howard Hudson and sound designer Harry Blake combine to administer a claustrophobic grip on the audience in a genuinely odd yet intriguingly turbulent tale, where the humour provided by Buchan's despairing Hubert, Vaughn's dimwit Dora, Symonds's opinionated, gossiping Mrs Terence and Anne Odeke's frank Nurse Libby gradually makes way for psychological weirdness and creeping spooks as night falls.

Sheppard's cast is terrific all round, led by Taylor's overbearing, selfish, ultimately vulnerable matriarch, Featherstone's irresistibly enigmatic, menacing Dan and McGrady's compellingly complex Olivia. No doubt bold for its time, Night Must Fall is now a country-house period piece, for sure, but it works anew as an entertainingly ghoulish, twisted thriller, Sheppard skilfully shepherding it away from becoming a melodrama.

Mind you, some things never change. How does Olivia indicate her feelings for Dan? By removing her glasses and letting her lustrous locks tumble, of course. Hair must fall. It was ever thus.

Night Must Fall, The Original Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, until Saturday. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk