The rehearsal room can be an amazing creative place, where actors can have fun with their characters and flesh out their roles.

But sometimes these ideas should remain in the rehearsal room to avoid damaging a story which doesn’t need embellishment.

Since Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca was published in 1938 it has remained a favourite, largely for its dark forbidding tone and unabashed examination of jealousy and revenge.

When the curtain rises on the crumbling remains of Manderley, with Rebecca’s initial prominent in the twisted ironwork, it looks like Kneehigh Theatre has got the tone just right.

But then the frustrating comedy starts to creep in, as minor characters’ parts are unnecessarily built up for cheap laughs, especially in the case of footman Robert’s mother’s embarrassing medical ailments.

A creepy moment when Mrs de Winter discovers Rebecca’s beach cottage is destroyed when a group of ghostly fishermen break into a swing dance.

And the climactic crucial pronouncement by Rebecca’s doctor is ruined by his slapstick entrance on the stairs.

The household staff seems to be having so much fun it’s hard to see why Mrs de Winter feels so alone – damaging a crucial component of the story.

When Kneehigh poked fun at the cut glass accents and middle class manners of Noel Coward’s melodrama Brief Encounter the comedy worked.

But with Rebecca it only succeeds in wrecking the story’s raw elemental atmosphere.

Two stars