
It was only a matter of time before 1980s/90s TV copper Inspector Morse hit the stage, and now he’s arrived in a play by Alma Cullen, who was responsible for scripting some of the TV series' episodes.
In this play within a play, we are watching a 1987 production of Hamlet onstage in Oxford before its entry to the West End.
Spin Glancy gives us Justin, an actor who puts a lot of ham into Hamlet, waving arms and hands like an out of control windmill. The poor lad’s distracted as he’s scared his closet gayness will be exposed and lead to the dole queue - after all it is 1987 - oh and his psychotic behaviour is also down to the cocaine he snorts.

Can rising star Rebecca (Eliza Teale) save the scene as Ophelia? Well she certainly steals it - coughing up blood and dropping down stone dead onstage. Great start, you think - made better because there’s no need to call the police - they’re already in the house as audience member Chief Insp Morse.
This is a very tangled tale of Catholic guilt, deceit, pregnancy, a string of mistresses, secrets and lies and even incest (spoiler). Many of the characters here were also in a production of Hamlet in Oxford in 1962, including a teenage Morse.
TV star Tom Chambers, who’s also a celebrity winner of the Strictly glitter ball, doesn’t attempt to emulate the TV Morse so marvellously embodied by John Thaw. He has shades of Thaw’s dark moods, but he’s altogether a much more nervous individual - sometimes he’s so jittery and on edge that you worry for his sanity. It’s a mystifying characterisation that I really didn't fully get, but he does command your attention.,
Charlotte Randle provides a gutsy cameo as an actress beyond her sell by date whose lunches are clearly always liquid. She squeezes some comedy from this and it’s to be applauded.

Robert Mountford is the bullying, vindictive but apparently brilliant theatre director Lawrence, but to my mind to use a Shakespeare analogy - he’s all “sound and fury signifying nothing.” He also doubles as a creepy Monsignor, who you wouldn’t step into the confessional with.
In the end the cause of death for two fatalities is explained, but as Morse’s sidekick Lewis tells us - quite aptly- “there’s a lot of acting going on.”
House of Ghosts runs at Theatre Royal Brighton until Saturday, 25 October.