An Agatha Christie classic should make you shiver at its sinister plot, make you gasp when its carefully woven secrets are exposed and make you wish you could come up with a storyline so ingenious.

So what disappointed me most about the Agatha Christie Theatre Company’s performance of Spider’s Web was the director’s insistence on taking a slapstick and tongue-in-cheek approach, to what could have been a classic thriller.

Mood and atmosphere aside, the casting is superb and the play is pacy and slick.

Cobblestone Court, a grand and imposing manor house, is Christie’s setting for murder.

The story revolves around Clarissa Hailsham-Brown (Melanie Gutteridge), the wife of a Foreign Office diplomat who is renowned for her tall tales.

But she is faced with a real-life drama after finding a man’s body in her drawing room.

Roping in three others, including her protective guardian Sir Rowland Delahaye (Bruce Montague), she embarks on a game of concealment and diversion.

But as she desperately tries to hide from police what she believes is the truth, she ends up with the finger of suspicion pointing firmly in her direction.

As usual with Christie, you have to keep your eye on the sideline characters – the mysterious servant Elgin (Michael Gabe) who comes home early from his regular Thursday night out, and the eccentric gardener Mildred Peake (Catherine Shipton), whose dotty persona may not be all that it seems.

Throw in a secret room to the library, opened only by a book-shaped lever, and a hidden compartment in an antique desk and you have all the ingredients of a baffling mystery.

For me, the production’s highlight was the performance of Melanie Gutteridge as Clarissa, who switched from sweet and dizzy to scheming and cool in the blink of an eye.