A SUMMER repertory season of popular comedies and thrillers used to be a staple of the British seaside summer, but it has largely disappeared in the past few decades, surviving only at Sidmouth, with its three-month summer rep season. Now summer rep comes to the Marine Theatre, a few miles along the coast at Lyme Regis, where three classic plays – two thrillers and a comedy – will run from 1st to 20th August.

The idea of rep – one play in production, one in rehearsal and one “on the book” – used to be the basis of many a young actor’s career, still fondly remembered by, among others, Sir Ian McKellen.

The Lyme season starts with the play that gave us the word which is now synonymous with a particularly horrible form of coercive control in relationships – gaslighting. Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight, running from 1st to 6th August, is the story of Jack and Bella Manningham, who have taken a four-storey house in London in the latter part of the 19th century.

Jack is a man-about-town, often leaving Bella alone in the house in the evenings. While alone, she thinks she sees and hears things that frighten her – is her mind playing tricks on her, or is it something altogether more sinister? And who is the strange man who appears with disturbing tales of the house and its past?

From Thursday 8th to Tuesday 13th August, the choice is comedy with one of Alan Ayckbourn’s most dazzling plays, Taking Steps. It is set in a crumbling, three-storey Victorian house that was once a brothel (and still said to be haunted by a murdered prostitute), and over the course of one hectic night and morning. This comedy has lots of running up and down stairs and in and out of rooms, mistaken letters and mistaken identities, with all the characters immersed in their personal problems, leading to much hilarious confusion.

Frederick Knott’s Dial M for Murder was made famous by Alfred Hitchcock in a 1954 film that starred Grace Kelly and Ray Milland. Playing at the Marine from Thursday 13th to Tuesday 20th August, this sinister thriller is a masterclass in suspense. Former professional tennis player Tony wants to murder his wealthy wife. He blackmails an old college associate to execute the crime but things don’t work out as planned.