River City's Deirdre Davis on starring in Snake in the Grass at Dundee Rep

Rehearsals for Snake in the Grass at Dundee Rep with (L-R) Ann Louise Ross, Emily Winter & Deirdre Davis | Alastair More

As male playwrights go, the mighty Sir Alan Ayckbourn - now 85 years old, and about to present his 90th new play at his beloved Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough - has always been a leading exponent of gender balance in theatre.

Even in the 1970s, when male roles in British theatre routinely outnumbered female ones by three or four to one, the sharp-eyed bard of England’s increasingly affluent suburbs tended to write plays featuring roughly equal numbers of male and female characters; and he was therefore a little taken aback when - in the 1990s - he found himself making his first venture into the ghost story genre with a play about a haunting that “unaccountably” involved a male cast of three, all mourning the same female character.

Haunting Julia premiered at Scarborough in 1994, with Ayckbourn still convinced that this had to be a play for three men, plus a remembered female voice; but he resolved to explore the haunting theme further, and this time to write a play for three female characters.

The result was Snake In The Grass, first seen at Scarborough in 2002; and Ayckbourn’s assistant director on that first production was a young Andrew Panton, now artistic director of Dundee Rep, but then just out of drama training in London, and trying to decide which direction his theatre career should take. “It was a fantastic opportunity for me back then,” says Panton, “and ever since I’ve loved working in the round, the theatre style pioneered at the Stephen Joseph since the 1950s. And I also had the opportunity to redirect the play for a proscenium arch theatre, when it transferred to London - so I feel I know it well!”

It therefore makes every kind of sense that after a busy summer directing Edinburgh Fringe smash-hit The History Of Paper - written by Gareth Williams and the late Oliver Emanuel, and co-produced by Dundee Rep and the Traverse Theatre - Panton is now directing a new production of Snake In The Grass, as a centrepiece of the theatre’s autumn season. The play tells the story of two sisters haunted by the memory of their father, who has just died, and of the nurse who cared for him in his final illness; and as director of the Dundee Rep Ensemble, Panton has had no shortage of fine female actors to choose from, in casting the play.

“We have two of our terrific ensemble members, Emily Winter and Ann Louise Ross, playing the younger sister Miriam, and the nurse Alice,” says Panton. “And we’re delighted to be joined, for this play, by the fabulous Deirdre Davis. Audiences will know from her long-running role as Eileen in River City, and from many great recent performances at Pitlochry Festival Theatre; and she’s taking on the role of the older sister Annabel, the one who returns to the family home after decades living elsewhere, and begins to confront some disturbing memories of her father. Snake In The Grass is proper three-act play, with action that unfolds over just over 24 hours, set in a garden that we’ll present in quite a naturalistic way; and we hope it will draw audiences right into its world, in a way that’s both entertaining, and sometimes very dark.”

Davis is also attracted by Alan Ayckbourn’s trademark ability to mix comedy with much darker strands of social observation, and even supernatural speculation. “It is amazing,” she says, “how he combines what is really hilarious, farcical comedy with pitch-black elements - including what’s clearly been a history of serious abuse - and also the sense, in this play, that there is something spooky going on.

“I’ve always loved that combination of high comedy and real drama,” adds Davis, whose recent Pitlochry roles have ranged from genteel 1940s housewife Laura in last year’s version of Brief Encounter, to Mari, the rowdy ageing good-time girl mother in Jim Cartwright’s Rise And Fall Of Little Voice. “And I think Ayckbourn is very good at making you hear the voice of the character, very clearly and distinctively, so that you can make all the shifts of tone work.

“For example, my character, Annabel, has been a successful businesswoman in her life away, and she is a slightly self-important figure. She doesn’t just say things, she declaims. Yet she has all these hidden depths to do with the experiences that emerge during the play; and all of that is just a joy to work with, particularly alongside Emily and Ann Louise, who know each other, and know exactly what they’re doing, and are such brilliant actors.”

Meanwhile in Scarborough, Ayckbourn is preparing for the opening next month of his new play Show And Tell, about a big birthday celebration gone wrong; but he has taken time out to wish Dundee Rep and his former assistant well, with a play which he says is dedicated to all the great female performers whose work he has loved, admired and enjoyed over the years.

“Another intriguing thing about this play,” says Davis, “is that although it’s more than 20 years old, and comes from an age before some of the technology we take for granted now, in other ways it seems so contemporary, in its willingness to tackle tough themes about what can go on behind closed doors, and women beginning to find their voices in relation to that.

“And although some people find the middle-class setting of Ayckbourn’s plays alienating, in the end they are about relationships and families and tensions - for example between these two sisters - that we all have to face in our lives, and which everyone will recognise. In the end, that’s how the play sucks you into its world; and it’s how you know that you’re in the hands of a master playwright, with Alan Ayckbourn.”

Snake In The Grass is at Dundee Rep from 13 September until 5 October