Georgian Theatre Royal, Richmond

ASKED to name Yorkshire’s most prolific writer, pub quiz contestants might say Alan Bennett, but audiences are learning the answer is the now largely forgotten novelist J S Fletcher, whose tale of suspense at an offshore lighthouse has been turned into a mystery melodrama by North County Theatre.

Director Nobby Dimon’s adaptation combines tongue-in-cheek comedy and visual wit to recount a story of revenge that has elements of Wuthering Heights and Lord Jim running though its dark underbelly.

During the intense build-up, two former seafarers and sworn enemies find themselves unexpectedly employed on the same remote rock, forcing the lighthouse keeper to separate them under lock and key to avoid one killing the other – though he appears to be nursing a murderous secret of his own.

Narrated tales of derring-do on the high seas and dastardly deeds ashore are too good to be true or too bad to be believed.

And who is the young woman swimming atop a stool, loudly knocking and piteously pleading to be let in? Haunting music creates a sense of impending doom and adds to the suspense.

The second half moves at a cracking pace and with greater comedy as Jezreel Cornish (Simon Kirk) and Mordechai Chiddock (Mark Cronfield) re-enact their differing versions of the same stories in front of the perplexed keeper (Nobby Dimon), now called on to be their judge, with Vivienne Garnett reprising female roles from their past.

A mix of acting realism and caricature, played out against a painted sea backdrop and an ingenious lighthouse built for fast scene changes from outside to interior, keeps the action alternating between high drama and comical exchanges, before a gothic horror twist so unexpected it guarantees guffaws of laughter.