A TENSE and menacing play which builds to a terrifying crescendo will benefit from the intimate environment of the Swan's Vesta Tilley Studio.

St John's Players has wanted to perform Dangerous Obsession for several years but has been waiting for the right time and right venue.

The group feel the intimate atmosphere of the Studio provides the perfect setting for this small cast play, emphasising its tight, claustrophobic atmosphere. Staging of plays in the Studio is very simple and requires an audience’s imagination with little to separate audience and cast.

In Dangerous Obsession, the audience will view events in the conservatory from the garden giving the audience the chance to experience something that is very different from watching a play in a conventional theatre.

It opens on a sunny afternoon where Sally Driscoll is interrupted watering plants in her conservatory by a man appearing at the door.

It is not a salesman but John Barrett who says he has come to renew their acquaintance after the Driscolls and the Barretts had met one weekend in Torquay.

He has a matter of business to discuss with Sally’s husband Mark.

The Torquay weekend is clearly more vivid in his mind than in Sally’s and has assumed a major importance in his life.

Barrett may appear ordinary and simple - but simple he is not.

After the arrival of Mark Driscoll he tells them about his wife’s accident and seems “dangerously obsessed” with pinning the blame for it on someone. Gradually as the story unfolds, tension and menace build into a terrifying climax.

Then, as suddenly as he has arrived, Barrett departs leaving a shattered marriage and lives that will never be the same again.

St Hohn's Player's last two Studio plays were One for the Road and The Opposite Sex.

Dangerous Obsession will run from Wednesday, March 25 to Saturday, March 28 at 7.45pm.

Tickets, costing £8 opening night and £10 after, are available by calling 01905 611427.