ALL the conventional elements of the bog-standard chiller are present in Robin French’s Crooked Dances, with its pair of innocents caught up in a mysterious and sinister situation, climaxing in a dark and rainy night marooned in a lonely house surrounded by a wolf-inhabited forest.

The innocents are with-it media folk Katy (Jeany Spark) and Nick (Olly Mott), sent by a trendy weekend magazine to interview and photograph reclusive world-famous classical pianist Silvia de Zigaro (Ruth Lass), who’s supposedly preparing for her final concert appearance.

Energetically determined to land her scoop by revealing her interviewee’s hidden personal history, Katy is first faced by de Zigaro’s overprotective manager Dennis (Ben Onwukwe) and finally the mystical virtuoso herself.

She first lectures Katy on the high-tech life style that “fills our heads full of shit” and then takes her into the world of out-of-body astral projection, Bergsonian theories of time and the strange life and music of Eric Satie.

Meanwhile Nick, equally frustrated in getting his photograph, provides the comedy in a situation that could easily become intellectually indigestible.

If Crooked Dances doesn’t live up to its blurb as paying “tribute to the beautiful, the inexplicable and the profound,” Elisabeth Freestone’s production has splendidly believable performances and impressive video back-projections.

They save the show, especially in the second half, from philosophical overload.

Runs until July 13, box office: rsc.com.