PERHAPS it’s indicative of an over-familiarity with the structure of an Agatha Christie staple, or maybe it’s because the audience is very much at home with a plot that has more twists and turns than that cliff path down to the beach.

Whatever it is, all sense of horror has long gone out with the tide. This may have once been a cutting-edge frightener, but the sort of cosy, civilised murder that Christie loved so much is now about as menacing as partaking of a pot of tea and cucumber sandwiches with the vicar.

Terrifying? Well, it’s not exactly a barrel of laughs, but this capacity crowd gave a rare display of perception for once, and reacted to these wonderfully cosy stereotypes in the right way. They laughed.

Which is why I’m at a total loss to understand why a BBC journalist said in his or her review of an earlier production that, and I quote, “It will have you gripped in your seats and curling your toes in fear.”

This person really does need to get out from under the duvet.

However, this is still great drama, with director Joe Harmston’s glorious sense of the Gothic taking us into the darkness - but not too far - and Matthew Bugg’s 1930s-style horror soundtrack pressing home the point just in case we still didn’t get it.

The Agatha Christie Theatre Company never lets us down, but they have really excelled themselves with this one. Just Good Friends star Paul Nicholas – simply love the irony – is malevolently magnificent as Sir Lawrence Wargrave, and although most of the cast – through no fault of their own - don’t live long enough to make that big an impression, Ben Nealon does deserve a special mention.

Thankfully, he does survive longer than most as adventurer Philip Lombard, an utter cad and a bounder who deserves to be horse-whipped without delay.

But any chemistry between him and flighty young filly Vera Claythorne (Verity Rushworth) never manages to get past the test tube stage, mainly because of the ever-rising death toll.

And Then There Were None runs until Saturday (March 21) and is highly entertaining, albeit for the wrong reasons.

John Phillpott