Suddenly Last Summer at the Silo theatre

The language is poetic and hardly a voice is raised but Tennessee William's Suddenly Last Summer is a brutal and savage beast all the same.

Violet Venable blames her son's death on her niece Catharine Holly and in revenge she plots to have Catharine silenced with a lobotomy from the obliging Dr Cukrowicz.

Much more than a domestic drama, it investigates larger themes of power and morality giving it universal appeal beyond the fading Southern states of America where it is so firmly set.

Shane Bosher draws out all the complexity of the piece with simple but stylised design and direction.

He pushes the pace so that scenes flow quickly from one to the other and the actors seldom leave the stage. It took me a while to adjust to the speed of change but it is a gamble that pays off in the second half of the play as the tension builds and builds.

The backdrop for the action is a stormy sky that signals the deluge of troubled emotions ahead. And the square stage suggests a game board for the characters to play out their twisted manipulations.

With such a sparse setting the pressure is on the actors to bring Williams' hothouse landscape to life, and thankfully they rise to the challenge.

Jacque Drew plays the poisonous Violet as a suitably self-deluded Southern belle.

Although much younger than her character, Jacque is believable in capturing the spiteful power of the matriarch. Most impressive is her near silent reaction to Toni Potter's final monologue as her niece Catharine Holly. A series of painful emotions move across Jacque's face like dark clouds across the sky with the falling tears forming a cleansing rain.

As Doctor Cukrowicz, Jeff Szusterman gives a deceivingly low-key performance. He appears to be even tempered but slowly reveals his characters' conflicting desires for money and doing the right thing. Jeff keeps the tension wound tight - his Doctor Sugar is so hard to read, you are left wondering right up to the end whether will he perform the lobotomy or not.

Much of the success of the story depends on Toni Potter's portrayal of the feisty but doomed Catharine Holly. It is a demanding role as Catharine is a strong-willed, truth teller out of step with the times. She is also a vulnerable young woman traumatised by her past, betrayed, drugged and abused by the very people who should be helping her.

Potter captures all of these nuances in a strong and intelligent performance that easily wins audience sympathy.

Jacqueline Nairn ensures there are no weak links in the ensemble with her good work in the lesser roles of Sister Felicity and Mrs Holly. Although her dual role did provide one of my two small critical quibbles as I found it distracting that she left her nurse's hat on for the role of Mrs Holly.

The other distraction came from Paul Nicoll's lighting design which in one scene featured a hot pink light in jarring contrast to the monochromatic tones used for the rest of the play.

But these are small asides to what is a successful psychological thriller - a tense, tight and thought-provoking show.

Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer is a complicated, scary beast of a play. With this production Shane Bosher and his cast and crew succeed in taming the beast without robbing its savage beauty.

* Suddenly Last Summer is at the Silo theatre until June 11