With an all-star cast, award-winning script and rave reviews, it's reasonable to assume Corpse! is worth the entrance money.

However, comic thrillers about murder plots frequently turn into not very funny farces which would take more than the cast of Casualty to revive them - rave reviews or not.

So I went to see Gerald Moon's play hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

Mark McGann plays polar-opposite brothers Evelyn and Rupert Farrant.

Evelyn is the flamboyant one, a resting actor living in a cold-water flat somewhere in London, who survives by stealing food from fashionable grocery stores.

Rupert is the repressed one, a fabulously successful, upper-middle-class snoot.

Only one similarity binds the twins: Both are supremely arrogant.

At one point, Evelyn requests his twin be shot through the heart in order to avoid marring the perfect beauty of their shared face.

Perhaps because of their arrogance, the twins hate each other.

The hatred takes on a murderous edge when Evelyn solicits a third-rate criminal named Major Powell (a blustery Colin Baker) to help him assassinate Rupert.

The plan is to steal his twin's identity and, more importantly, his fortune.

While the plot is devilishly clever, it has the flaw of all foolproof plans - things don't go quite as they should.

Evelyn's drunk landlady Mrs McGee provides the timely comic interruptions.

As a character, Mrs McGee is the weakest. She is not essential to the storyline but this is irrelevant because Louise Jameson is the show's pick-me-up.

Every time there's a chance the play is getting a little boring, Jameson comes stumbling in, fawning all over the theatrical McGann whose wonderfully camp performance steals the show. The two work off each other perfectly.

Corpse! succeeds because McGann has identified his two characters, effortlessly slipping between them.

Evelyn's resigned horror at the advances of Mrs McGee is hilariously warming and by contrast, the toffee-nosed Rupert wins no friends but is the perfect antidote to his brother.

From their vocal inflections to their mannerisms, Evelyn and Rupert are separate entities yet they're not so dissimilar we forget they are brothers.

The play's storyline is quite simple in principle and perfectly easy to follow, yet the twists and turns keep you guessing until the final curtain.

This is good-quality theatre, with the advantage that all the little imperfections have been ironed out long before Corpse! came to town.

For tickets, call the box office on 01273 328488.