A thriller that still packs a lot of thrills Frederick Knott's 1966 play Wait Until Dark is the final offering of the season from Stage Centre Productions. To borrow a phrase, it's a killer-diller.

As directed by L. Garth Allen, the play scales one rising line of tension until the shocking climatic scene. The lighting design is unique. The stage is rarely given bright light, but with the final scene played in near-total darkness, the viewer is forced to focus in rapt attention. It pays with a couple of great plot twists as the heroine and her attacker play a brilliantly choreographed game of cat and mouse.

Will van der Zyl, who takes control of the stage early on and never really surrenders it, plays the cat, a particularly nasty character named Harry Roat Jr. He's the brains behind this operation, an attempt to recover a doll stuffed with heroin that has come into the possession of our heroine.

His two henchmen, portrayed by Paul Love and Michael Chodos, are a pair of bumblers who seem barely able to maneuver a light bulb out of a socket. Yet they are the first characters we meet as they steal into this Greenwich Village apartment.

Their target is a young blind woman, Suzy Hendrix, played by Sara VanBuskirk as a savvy young bride whose attention to detail serves her well. It's a performance that covers a lot of bases. She makes it entirely conceivable that Suzy would be taken in by the conman's initial assertion that he is an old friend of her husband's. As she comes to suspect that the good guys are really not that at all, the performance gradually becomes more intense.

Liza Lubalin plays Gloria, the little girl who lives upstairs who aids Suzy. This young lady captures the insolence of the character without making her so obnoxious as to be offensive. In her scenes she exhibits a naturalness rarely seen in a performer so young.

The set is designed to create a number of playing areas and yet can feel quite claustrophobic when necessary. Moreover, having the main entrance on a raised landing gives prominence to characters as they arrive.

The play was an instant hit when it first opened in New York in 1966, and scored an even bigger success a few years later as a movie. But thrillers are most effective in small theatres where you can get swept up in the intrigues of the plots. At the performance I saw, the audience was kept on the edge of their seats. That's exactly where a good thriller should have you.

Stage Centre Productions offers Wait Until Dark at Fairview Library Theatre, 35 Fairview Mall Dr., until Saturday, May 23. For ticket information and the performance schedule visit online at www.stagecentreproductions.com or call the box office at 416-299-5557.