Reconciliation does not come easily in this repressively gloomy household, however. Apart from his domineering and demanding mother, Harry is confronted with elderly uncles and aunts stagnating in their narrow-minded, trivial lives, though he feels some affinity for his more sympathetic Aunt Agatha and his young cousin and childhood playmate Mary. The sense of unchanging solidity proves to be illusory, as the disturbed Harry’s revelations about his wife’s death are matched by the exposure of a long-concealed family scandal, so that the celebration turns into a post-mortem.

Eliot’s intention was to show how the rituals and routines which we cling to for a sense of security can suddenly give way to a black hole of doubt and uncertainty, with the mundane lying cheek by jowl with the eternal. As an Anglo-Catholic convert, there is an implicit message of the importance of faith. Harry’s existential crisis, in which he is literally haunted by ghosts from his past, opens his eyes to disturbing visions which the others cannot see.

Although Eliot’s high seriousness is mixed with some urbane wit, the play is still heavy-going, creaking as much as the crumbling family mansion. This is very much a cerebral experience, with a few moments of suspense and even horror, in which it is difficult to engage with these remote aristocratic characters who dress for dinner and have baths run for them by servants. Sometimes it seems almost like a metaphysical version of Poirot or Cluedo, with well-mannered and impeccably dressed toffs discussing murder in a country house, especially when the local police sergeant turns up to report the two absent younger sons have been involved in separate accidents.

Nonetheless, Herrin’s production is terrifically spooky, portentous rather than pretentious, with dramatic appearances by the spirits of Harry’s dead wife and three avenging furies in the form of his younger self. Bunny Christie’s marvellous set conjures up an almost gothic feeling, with hidden doorways behind the fireplace, dusty wooden panelling and leaking roof. Rick Fisher’s superb lighting is particularly effective when the chorus of chanting elderly relatives is spotlit with their shadows enlarged on the wall, while Nick Powell’s sound effects add to the ominous ambience.

The cast deliver Eliot’s highly wrought dialogue with assurance. Samuel West’s restlessly tortured Harry, wracked with guilt over his wife’s death and searching for some deeper meaning in his life, conveys real intensity. Gemma Jones gives the manipulative Amy genuine pathos, while Penelope Wilton lends Agatha a serene melancholy and Hattie Morahan suggests Mary’s frustrated desire to escape.

As the chorus, William Gaunt is an amiable clubman who knows he is out of his depth, Paul Shelley a blustering ex-colonial soldier, Anna Carteret an embittered snob and Una Stubbs a well-intentioned but naïve spinster, while Christopher Benjamin is the avuncular doctor summoned to find out what’s wrong with Harry – though it turns out that his troubles are well beyond the help of medical science.

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