THOSE familiar with this Stephen King story probably anticipated an uncomfortable evening.

Based on his own experience of being typecast as a horror story writer while battling a heavy drug habit, the opening scene to this play, adapted by Simon Moore, sees romantic novelist Paul Sheldon waking from a drug-induced coma.

After his car had crashed in darkest Dartmoor, he had been rescued by his most obsessive fan, Annie Wilkes. Her initially caring bedside manner becomes increasingly bipolar as she effectively makes him her prisoner, using drugs and deceit.

Freaked out by Sheldon’s decision to kill off her favourite character, she demands that he write an acceptable sequel.

As Annie’s murky past is subtly exposed, Sheldon fears for his life.

Both Ben O’Shaughnessy and Hannah Wood are outstanding, running the whole gamut of emotions in this excellently staged two-hander, for which director Anne Robertson and her technical team deserve great credit.

ALAN JOHNS