Haunting Julia ** TNT

This is the second time in recent months that an Alan Ayckbourn “ghost” play has received its London premiere.

Almost all of this prolific playwright’s plays (and he’s written over seventy of them) premiered in Scarborough, and many of them have made their way south to considerable critical and public acclaim. So if it’s taken since 1994 for this supposedly spooky tale to get here, there’s always the suspicion that it isn’t one of his best.

Sadly, despite a promising opening scenario, that misgiving proves justified.

It’s been twelve years since his musically gifted daughter Julia died at the age of 19, and in that time a still grieving Joe Lukin has transformed the attic flat where she lived as a student into a combination of shrine and music centre. He can’t get to grips with the death by overdose (was it suicide, accident or murder?) of the girl who had been hailed as “Little Miss Mozart” and has brought her then boyfriend Andy (now a married father) and mortuary attendant and self-proclaimed psychic Ken to see the memorial he has created and show them how he believes she is trying to contact him from beyond the grave.

The trouble is, none of it is particularly interesting – we soon get the message that Joe was an inadequate father, that Andy has a reasonable explanation for everything Joe tells him, and that Julia didn’t always find it easy being a prodigy.

For all the talk that comes before, the surprises, when they come, aren’t at all shocking. That old standard of books tumbling off a shelf really won’t wash anymore and, disappointingly, this dramatically inert offering neither engages the emotions nor sends shivers up the spine.

Riverside Studios, Crisp Road, W6 9RL (020 8237 1111) riversidestudios.co.uk Tube: Hammersmith Until July 3 (£15 - £25)