Terrance Rattigan, the Brighton-based playwright who died in 1977, was a master of his craft.

Fifty years on from its opening, The Deep Blue Sea remains a powerful and resonant piece of drama.

The story comes straight out of Rattigan's personal life when a young actor he was living with left him and later committed suicide.

Under Rattigan's pen, it's a powerful drama about love and its illogicality, hope and despair, grief and ultimately loneliness.

Rattigan's first draft was explicit about its homosexuality, something for which he would have been jailed had he left it as it was, but he changed the play's development into a doomed love between a mature woman and a young former fighter pilot.

The result is a beautifully written and crafted drama and this production puts into a strong cast who know how to deliver all the tension and the wonderful rhythms and diction of the language to best effect.

Harriet Walter, a regular Royal Shakespeare Company member, plays the role of Hester Collyer who, as the play opens, is lying in front of a gas fire clutching an empty bottle of aspirin.

She is devastatingly effective as the injured woman who wants love on her terms, teamed with a totally believable performance from Robert Portal, as her young suitor, who also wants love but on his terms.

Walter and the rest of the company have the mastery of their characters and act, as it were, without acting. They all live and become their characters, which makes for superbly provocative entertainment.

Roger Lloyd-Pack is a revelation. Best known for his roles as Trigger in Only Fools And Horses and Owen Newitt in The Vicar Of Dibley, here he throws off his sitcom persona to play Kurt Miller, a doctor of foreign extraction struck off for some reason never made explicit.

He adopts a beautifully deliberate method of delivery which impeccably shows a man whose English is not his first language and like the rest of the cast becomes totally believable.

This exploration of love is both witty and highly dramatic, the tension is beautifully managed, which must be the trademark of all Rattigan's work.

The combination of superb use of language with such beautiful and moving acting makes for one hugely entertaining evening, giving us a truly proper play to keep you on the edge of your seat.

For tickets, call 01273 328488.