THE pantomime season has finally ended, and if you have been champing at the bit for a "proper play" in York in early 2017, then here it is.

The Grand Opera House has a multitude of box-office musicals on the way, but this is a red velvet theatre that equally suits a vintage play, and Gaslight is one such play.

It really should be better known than it is, but if a writer of the pedigree of playwright Patrick Marber names it among his favourites, then take note of his judgement. Gaslight is the work of another Patrick, Patrick Hamilton, written in 1938 and suffused with Freudian psychology, but given the framework of a Victorian melodrama: always a winning setting for a thriller.

Director Anthony Banks has taken the "Hamilton horror" on the road with a cast led by Strictly Come Dancing winner and The Halcyon jazz singer Kara Tointon, Welsh actor, comedian and documentary maker Keith Allen and National Theatre actor Rupert Young: an attractive, pedigree line-up that adds to the appeal of this touring production.

"I fancied seeing something different," said one woman in the stalls in the row in front, who was visiting the Opera House for the first time and was so unfamiliar with the city's road map that she had arrived late. Hopefully, others will follow suit in taking a punt on seeing Gaslight because it is most definitely worth it: a great, if belated start, to the 2017 theatre diary in York, no less.

To a cracking good cast add a suitably gloomy set by David Woodhead; spooky lighting by Howard Hudson, and spooky sound designs by Ben and Max Ringham.

Kara Tointon doesn't dance or sing, of course, but reaffirms her acting skills as Hamilton's play opens with Tointon's pale and fragile Bella Manningham being put through mental torment and humiliation by her husband, Jack (Young). Dig by dig, he is driving her towards madness with his combination of staying out every night; maligning her in front of cocky maid Elizabeth (Charlotte Blackledge) and quizzing her about missing pictures, lists etc.

Housekeeper Elizabeth (Helen Anderson) urges Bella to stay strong, and as the cruel Jack heads out yet again, enter Keith Allen's Rough, a retired detective on a renewed last mission to crack an old crime. Allen told The Press he saw Rough "more as a showman, a bit of a dandy", and if that gives him a portal to "show off", then his performance is nevertheless a responsible, rather than self-indulgent, one.

He is alive to its comic potential, more so than any Rough your reviewer can recall, but it wholly benefits the play's impact, and he has all the necessary air of mystery and investigative purposefulness too. Everyone plays off him terrifically well too, even if he takes the plaudits, and so Gaslight is a dark delight and a shining example of how to revive a golden oldie to startling new effect.

Gaslight runs at Grand Opera House, York, until Saturday. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york