To the considerable enhancement of box office takings, W. Somerset Maugham’s The Sacred Flame was condemned as immoral after early performances (1929/30) by both the Bishop of London and the Vatican. Today, in an extremely rare revival by English Touring Theatre, it remains profoundly shocking for reasons that are difficult — spoilers and all that — fully to explain.

Taking a cue from what the company sees fit to divulge in a publicity leaflet, one can say that its plot is concerned with a death that starts to look as if it might be murder.

Well-heeled Maurice Tabret (Jamie De Courcey), a First World War flying ace, is found one morning dead in the bed to which he has been confined for five years after breaking his back in an aeroplane accident.

A death from natural causes, says his general practitioner Dr Harvester (Al Nedjari) — a medico who seems implausibly superfluous to the needs of his other patients in terms of time (nil) being spent with them. But for Nurse Wayland (Sarah Churm) — brusquely efficient and, it first appears, coldly unemotional about her patient, indeed about all her fellow human beings — the death seems suspiciously convenient for some members of his family. All living with him, they are doting wife Stella (Beatriz Romilly), his easy-going, daughter of the Raj mother (Margot Leicester) and ex-pat brother Colin (David Ricardo-Pearce).

Somewhat in the fashion of an Agatha Christie mystery, there is also present a sleuth-like figure in the shape of Major Liconda (Robert Demeger), an old India hand and pal of Mrs Tabret Snr. Love, and the powerful demands made on those in its possession, is the theme of the play, its title taken from a Coleridge poem which speaks of “all thoughts, all passions, all delights” assembled to feed love’s sacred flame.

Maugham’s own life, of course, was notoriously rackety over affairs of the heart, and the play reflects, to a degree, his own selfishness where these are concerned. Illustrated in it too, one senses, is his steely stoicism in the face of suffering arising from his experiences, in his early days, working as a doctor.

The moral questions raised in the play remain, as I have suggested, a potent topic for debate today. This is presumably why director Matthew Dunster has pulled it from its time frame to the present day, with an up-to-the-minute abstract, white-walled set from designer Anna Fleischie, expertly lit — in a range of bold colours responding to the mood of the moment — by Lee Curran. The actors though — uniformly excellent all of them — are in costumes harking back to a much earlier period, which strikes an odd note.

Another curious feature of the play is its unusual, often implausible, dialogue In a deliberate reaction against the spontaneous speech being offered in the early stage works of Noël Coward, Maugham set out — as he explained at the time — to let his characters give utterance to polished thoughts. These sometimes sound very unlikely but nevertheless remain well worth hearing.

Until Saturday. Box office: 01865 305305

Three stars