It was never going to be an easy task translating the iconic 1980s thriller Fatal Attraction from screen to stage.
How to convincingly recreate that crucial suspense for one thing?
Coronation Street star Kym Marsh takes on the role of female predator Alex Forrest, made famous in the film by Glenn Close, who embarks on an ill-fated affair with married man Dan Gallagher, played by fellow ex-Corrie cast member Oliver Farnworth.
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They play the parts technically well, with clear diction, impressively maintained American accents and a whole lot of high energy, wanton writhing.
Highlights of James Dearden's stage play and conveyed even better than in the screenplay version, which he also wrote, are the strong themes of the story and the questions it poses.
"How well do we ever really know someone?" Dan asks, after meeting what seems to him like two different women, the confident seductress Alex in the bar and the desperate, vulnerable Alex that follows.
"I'm a rational man, I'm a lawyer", he tells himself.
But who of any of us, he implies, is rational all the time and when consumed with desire?
It may have been set in the 1980s, but the play's themes are as relevant today as ever and fans of the film will be pleased to note that the on stage action sticks almost exactly to the original, with a slight variation in the ending, connected to Alex's love of the opera Madame Butterfly.
Paul Englishby's delicious drug haze music hits the nail on the head too.
The powerful impact of the story though is largely dependent on facial expressions, something only a small fraction of any theatre audience are close enough to view.
Without being able to see these, the characters' body language takes on an even greater importance but in this production it unfortunately fails to match the dialogue, with more ambling walks than impassioned lunges and more hands in pockets than hand wringing.
There are some moments too when Dan's wife Beth, played by Footballers' Wives actress Susie Amy, seems unconvinced by the words coming out of her own mouth, especially when she professes her love for her husband.
Some of her lines tend to fall a little flat and in the scene where she discovers her daughter's pet rabbit in a pan, boiled to death by the obsessed Alex, her reaction seems more one of frustration at a burned dinner than one of horror.
That said, it would be almost impossible to make the stage play as impactful as the film and maybe this isn't what most of the audience even expect.
What they get is an entertaining production of a classic thriller and what more do you want from an evening at the theatre?
Fatal Attraction plays at Manchester Opera House until February 26
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