Suddenly Last Summer, Tennessee William’s devastating exploration of predation is a gory business. Matthew Mair’s resonant production embraces its slow evisceration of character against Marina Yakimova and Jem Hunter’s bloody backdrop which drips danger.

The one act action takes place in 1938 at a maundering Gothic mansion in New Orleans’ exclusive Garden District, belonging to widowed socialite Mrs Violet Venable (elegant but watchful Celine Denis). As mistress of the house, she is imperious and impervious to other peoples’ feelings, including those of her meek maid Miss Foxhill (Yue Wen).Capriciously, she chooses to greet her guests in a room overlooking her son Sebastian’s jungle garden. It is a place of ‘violent colours’ where cries of ‘beasts, serpents, and birds…of savage nature’ play out. Perfect for cocktails at five o’clock.

Sebastian Venable is not present. He died Suddenly Last Summer. On how and why rests a great deal: his mother’s myth of Sebastian’s chaste poetic genius, his aunt Mrs Holly (cold, dispassionate Jasmin Kypri) and nephew George (irascible and threatening Akarsh Shankar’s) expectation of inheritance, and most poignantly and powerfully, the life and liberty of George’s volatile sister Catherine (luminous Hafeja Khanam). Catherine is the only witness what happened Suddenly Last Summer. Mrs Venables rejects Catherine’s account and has called in medical help. Like Tennessee William’s own sister, a frontal lobotomy, if performed, will prove life-changing.

It is for the young, ambitious neurosurgeon Dr Cukrowicz (conflicted Jem Hunter) to decide, after hearing Catherine’s verbatim account. His blond good looks, youth and talent have played some part in Mrs Venable’s interest, but so has his confession of ‘money problems.’ On his clinical decision rests a substantial legacy to his Foundation for research. Catherine’s strict nurse Sister Felicity (crisp Leaitlyn Walsh) is both warden and unwilling witness.

Injected with a truth drug, Catherine’s account both shocks and appalls. Williams called this ‘the most lyrical’ of his plays, and Catherine’s vulnerability, eloquence and candour run through the play’s grotesque Gothic trappings and parched white sky far away like cool water. Catherine’s poetry soars and swoops, tugging at our heartstrings.

Producer Carmen Omitowoju’s diligence in co-ordinating all the elements on stage comes together most horribly. What rests is the doctor’s final words. On that, the truth in her memory lives or dies. Go see!