"STILL water, deep ground, and underneath the Devil is turning around."

For Sussie, confused and childlike, the smallest of matters sparks her fears and tears: the creatures that roam outside, her brother's anger, their visitor's refusal to sit beside her on the bed.

Sussie and Frikkie are happy most of the time, alone now their parents have been murdered; mutilated some years before. Only their maid Alina is there to comfort and serve in the ramshackled family farm that is failing around them.

Into the siblings' sordid squalor of shared filthy bed sheets and nocturnal employment comes a stranger who will threaten their existence. Will the creatures outside in the South African bush do for him, or will Frikkie have to take matters into his own hands.

African Gothic is the disturbing latest production co-directed by Winchester's Deborah Edgington for the London stage. With fellow director and producer Roger Mortimer, Edgington has again proved that a schooling with the Hampshire city's Chesil Theatre, where she staged an adventurous production of The Seagull last summer, is no bar to consistent London critical acclaim.

Reza de Wet's alarming tale of white trash in South Africa's welt is directed here with few apologies to the sensitivities of its audience. From the play's opening scenes where Sussie, played by Janna Fox, and Frikkie, by Oliver Gomm, are found in bed entwined like lovers amid grimy sheets, to the play's blood-soaked conclusion, the sexual and violent air of anticipation lies as thick as the sweet smelling smoke enveloping the stage.

Fox is wonderful as the childlike Sussie, Gomm superbly menacing as her disturbing brother.

Adam Ewan plays the visitor Grove who stumbles into the siblings' nightmarish world with a memorable performance as a naive solicitor who realises too late the peril he is in.

Alina is hauntingly portrayed by Lesley Ewen, the on-looker who sees more than she lets on.

African Gothic does not set out to provide easy answers nor a comfortable experience for the tight- packed audience at the Park Theatre, but it is marvellous drama.

Runs until January 23. ParkTheatre.co.uk

Ian Murray