A NEW play by North-East writer Margaret Wilkinson is among the season’s highlights at Darlington Arts Centre.

Queen Bee, set in a ramshackle Northumberland manor house, is a ghost story which looks at the relationship between three women made to feel paranoid by a figure lurking outside.

The women, who have created an eccentric world for themselves inside the house that they rarely leave, become increasingly suspicious of each other as the play progresses.

The audience is left wondering who’s innocent?

Who’s not? And, at any one time, who’s in the most danger?

The playwright was inspired by classic ghost stories and an understanding that they can have a psychological interpretation as well as simply being spooky.

She is also interested in what she regards as today’s obsession with life after death.

“I wanted to write something scary for the stage that would have the audience arguing about what was real and what was imagined, and whether both could exist simultaneously,”

she said.

Part of her impetus in writing the play was the fact that the genre is less often created for live theatre.

“On television and in film, ghosts, vampires and spirits seem to be everywhere,” she said. “Why aren’t there more stage plays with ghosts?”

Her quirky, but chilling play is directed by Wils Wilson, whose recent work includes award-winning plays for the National Theatre of Scotland.

Imogen Cloet, who lives in the North-East, designed the set and musician John Alder composed and performs the music and sound effects.

Queen Bee is the second play produced by the North East Theatre Consortium, a partnership of Darlington Arts Centre, The Customs House at South Shields and Queen Hall Arts Centre at Hexham.

Together with New Writing North, they have created a partnership to develop, produce and tour new plays in and around the region.

It is performed at the Arts Centre from May 20-22. For tickets and more details, ring the box office on 01325- 486555 or log on to www.darlingtonarts.co.uk.