Economically, Dangerous Obsession, with one set and a cast of three, is going to be just what the theatre management ordered.  As an example of the thriller genre, it is above average, so a fairly healthy future, both in the West End but more especially in regional theatres, can be predicted. N. J. Crisp is best known as a television writer, and with its continuous action the play strongly resembles one of those TV plays of the sixties when the drama was largely studio bound.  There is a luxuriant conservatory setting -  courtesy of Shelagh Keegan, whose efforts received a round of applause on the first night in the best rep theatre tradition - and an attractive woman whose sunbathing is interrupted by the arrival of a polite but forceful stranger whose knowledge of her and her husband seems to be rather more than hers of him. It transpires that they have previously met, though the woman was too sozzled for full recollection, at a conference in  Torquay, and there is a clue that this apparently happy Home Counties marriage, based around the husband's important job, the big house and the imported cars, is not all that it might be. To give away more would be to transgress the critic’s code of not revealing too much about a thriller, except that in concept this one has certain similarities to the recently revived An Inspector Calls in as much as lies are being lived, recriminations are in the air and redemption may be achieved.

Roger Smith directs this example of what someone once called “the higher bosh” with enviable assurance, getting over the rather sticky first act by making the second full of surprises and neat touches.  There are some sexual nuances which make one speculate as to whether the French film version might not be the next phase in the play’s existence , and believable performances by Dinsdale Landen, excellent as the prissy, pedantic caller, and Carol Drinkwater and Jeremy Bulloch as the yuppies with a house full of secrets and suspicions.