A BOY, in his late teens, sneaks in through the French windows. Nervy, he is smoking. Maybe that is why he is called Smokey. He hears a banging noise, and promptly hides in the bench seat.

Who would live in a house like this? Plush furniture, leather seating, mint music system. Cushions just this side of Footballers' Wives in taste.

Enter the City FM radio boss, millionaire Tom (Gary Mavers, erstwhile Dr Andrew Attwood in Peak Practice). Handsome, 40, nice trousers.

His wind-down - listening to his station, of course - is broken when a whirlwind strikes, otherwise known as his wife Vic (Gillian Taylforth, as in EastEnders' Kathy and Footballers' Wives' Jackie). He's forgotten to pick her up after a fortnight away in Paris, and they have issues, or rather one issue.

Vic is sterile; Tom will never have the son and heir he so craves. They argue, as they always do these days. He leaves to buy milk. Up pops Smokey (precocious Danny Nutt) to tell her Tom wants her dead, and he's the contract killer but doesn't do that sort of thing.

So the form and formula is set for Richard Stockwell's new play, his first since his 1997 debut Killing Time. Here is a psychological thriller with an insidious line in black humour, a hint of Joe Orton anarchy mixed in with social drama. No wonder Stockwell has been writing for both EastEnders and a new Miss Marple series.

Anyway, back to a plot thickening as pleasingly as whipped cream. Smokey has news for Tom: he has a daughter, Belinda (Julie Buckfield), now 19, from a relationship with old flame Catherine. Catherine, newly dead in Hong Kong, had been the great love of Tom's lawyer, Jack (Doug Rollins), who had always resented Tom taking her from him.

Smokey has news for Taylforth's old Vic, too: Tom's having a fling with a 19-year-old thing from marketing.

"No one is quite who it seems", the poster says, and the more the play progresses, the more that is true. Who is Belinda? Smokey? Will Vic miraculously re-appear from the bench seat, where she has been placed after being shot?

Taylforth, in her stage-play debut, moves a little stiffly (not only after the gunshot) but she has always had a way with a caustic, withering line, while Mavers makes light of a ten-year gap from theatre with a swaggering performance that superbly sustains a drunken night's journey into day. Blood-y good show.

Box office: 01904 671818

Updated: 10:22 Wednesday, March 26, 2003