The ghost story is perennially popular. Typically, it exploits our anxieties about particular sites: graveyards, wells, stately homes, vacant warehouses, narrow streets. It thrives on ambiguity. And it succeeds by speaking to submerged desires and doubts, which in our daily lives are often crowded out by our intellect and practical concerns.

In this collaboration between Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, which is for over-16s only, there's not much sense of the uncanny but our nervous energies are engaged, and there are sly allusions to classics of the genre.

We open with a montage of scary effects before cutting to the corduroy-suited seriousness of self-styled parapsychologist Professor Philip Goodman (Nyman), an articulate compere who is superficially sceptical and unflustered.

We then see the characters — known as percipients — whose macabre stories Goodman has come across in the course of his research. There's a night-watchman, world-weary and caustic; a student driving at night, unlicensed; and a brash public-school type who somewhat surprisingly turns out to be….

But no, it would be wrong to disclose more about the plots of these stories. Their impact depends on unexpectedness. Suffice to say each involves a scare, and the surprises, when they come, are not always the expected surprises.

The mood has been carefully created. Jon Bausor’s design is intelligently spare, highlighting only a handful of details pertinent to each percipient’s narrative. James Farncombe’s lighting accentuates contrasts, while Nick Manning has conjured a disquieting soundscape, and Scott Penrose’s special effects are foxily precise.

The performances also convince, with David Cardy as the nightwatchman perhaps the most arresting and Nyman showing the greatest range. Yet the wisdom of having three directors — the authors plus the Lyric's Sean Holmes — is questionable.

It's as if the feel of the production has been achieved democratically. Horror works best when it is the outcome of a single potent vision.

While many will profess themselves scared by Ghost Stories, I wasn't. More than with other types of drama, this kind of piece demands that the audience responds as one. Here, the reactions included peals of laughter, implausible fits of screaming and the running commentary of theatregoers who apparently needed to pre-empt, describe and gaspingly recollect their every feeling.

This isn't the fault of the show's creators but it compromises the depth and resonance of the experience. I suspect that Ghost Stories may prove a cult success but it's not truly disturbing. In fact, it's one big exercise in crafty misdirection.
Until 3 April. Information: 0871 221 1729.