There’s terrifying power in a story well-told. That’s both the theme of The Red Room and a review of this play, where HG Wells’ psychological ghost thriller is compellingly brought to life by solo actor Ellie Ball. Charlotte Ball’s subtle adaptation leaves much of Wells’ text intact, yielding a show that sits on the very cusp of storytelling and theatre.

In The Red Room, as so often, less means more. There’s just one prop, a mirror – but my goodness, how creepy that mirror becomes. There’s only one major character, though Ball capably steps into a handful of other roles to frame the story at the start and end. And most of the narrative’s set in a single place, the eponymous “red room”, a gloomy hall in a decaying, near-deserted castle.

Wells most likely imagined his narrator a man, but Ball’s portrayal feels comfortingly familiar; reminiscent perhaps of the practical governesses from other Gothic-era tales. At first she’s brisk and confident, declaring from the towering height of her 28 years that she will have no truck with the supernatural. But once she’s alone in the cavernous red room, its flickering candles barely penetrating the darkness, doubts and anxieties begin to seep in. The change in the protagonist is gradual and credible, and judicious scares startle us all into wondering whether the haunting is real or just in her mind.

Ball also shows a remarkable affinity with the space she’s performing in. There’s an element of luck to how beautifully it matches the story – there just happen to be some steps by the door, there just happens to be a chandelier – but she drinks every drop of her good fortune, venturing from the stage into the tiny aisle to subtly bring out each detail. With light and darkness a key theme of the plot, she also makes effective use of a hand-held torch to punctuate her character’s creeping decline into terror.

Between them, Ellie and Charlotte Ball have delivered a perfectly-paced miniature horror, made all the more vivid because it’s small-scale and low-key. They take us right into the red room, and keep us eerily unsure of exactly what we’ve seen therein. The narrator concludes that the room is haunted. And with storytelling this lucid, would you dare to disagree?