Considering he didn't really believe in ghosts, Charles Dickens wrote some very good parts for them!

They clearly fascinate playwright  Hugh Janes who has taken a number of Dickens' original ghost stories and produced a full length supernatural drama, which is a real tribute to Mr Dickens' talent and style.

I can imagine the theatre manager's brief. “Come on now, Hugh. The Woman in Black has been a huge West End success for three decades. What we want is more of the same. And if we get the chap who designed that show, Michael Holt, to design this one, we're bound to have a hit on our hands.” How right they were.

The Woman in Black was hugely innovative when it first appeared on stage in 1987. It was described as 'terrifying', and there was one particularly spine chilling moment that made the entire audience jump out of their seats. The Haunting has several of those. It has taken the theatrical ghost story to whole new level.

The foreboding greets you as you walk through the door. The auditorium is practically in darkness, save for one motionless figure centre stage trying to read a book in the gloom. He is David Filde, a dealer in antiquarian books, who has come to the “loathsome” dilapidated mansion that is the seat of the recently deceased Lord Gray who has left his very fine collection of antiquarian books for his son (the current Lord Gray) to dispose of to pay his debts.

Filde has, of course, been warned not come, for the house is haunted. The other obvious hint he ignores is that one of the books is a rare handwritten bible which fails to mention the word 'not'. So its commandments include “thou shalt commit adultery” and “thou shalt kill”; merely a 17th century typo? I think not! He's also given the old Lord's deathbed to sleep in, which doesn't entirely appeal.

The two men have (conveniently) deeply opposing views on the supernatural - and their debate is perhaps a little stretched. But their characterisation is fascinating. Richard Lemming is bright and perky as young Filde. He has the look of a Gothic Goon Show Bluebottle, with his up-turned nose, back suite and white book-handler's gloves. Burly David Ahmad (Lord Gray) has an air of James Robertson Justice about him in his tweeds and pig-tale.

Filde is susceptible to influence. Distrustful Gray is disinclined to 'indulge in melodramatic fiction' - which is a touch ironic as this is one. So it is Filde who hears the ghostly girl first.

I am allowed to give this away as she's in the programme, and in her brief and dramatic appearances Jessica Hole is pale ghostliness personified.

So the cast is excellent, and they have to be, to match up to the splendid illusions and chilling effects. If you are expecting a ghost story to be accompanied by unsettling music (in this case composed by Ollie Mills), deep rumbles, frightening drones, eerie voices, animate objects, slamming doors and crashing thunder then you won't be disappointed. But, as ever with the supernatural, it is the totally unexpected that makes your skin creep - assuming you haven't jumped out of it first.

Director Eleanor Taylor is aided and abetted by master magician Dr Will Houstoun who pulls off some stunning effects. And here I can't give anything away - though the stunt at the end of act one is sensationally baffling.

I'd love to be clearer about how much of this play is Dickens and how much is Janes, but the two gentlemen, centuries apart, collude most agreeably to concoct a riveting, hair raising evening.

Four stars

Reviewed by Chris Eldon Lee at New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme where The Haunting continues to show until Saturday 15 June.

Image credit: Andrew Billington, supplied by New Vic Theatre