As the audience takes their seats on multiple levels of scaffolding down long corridors that suggest a descent into the dissident world of hedonism, The Trick’s Shóna (Mary Cate Smith) is already gyrating in mock sexy moves on a lapdancer’s pole. Staged at the Boys School of Smock Alley Theatre, the choice of location seems wonderfully ironic.

In their interpretation of two thrillers of the Grand Guignol, Carpet Theatre adopt a characteristically imagistic approach. However Shóna’s erotica is the only instance of Carpet Theatre’s trademark physical humour and the production suffers as a result. Albeit camp and satirical, the first story, involving the aforementioned lapdancer and her encounters with a knife wielding killer (an aptly unpredictable Chris Gallagher), ends anticlimactically with an ear-piercing scream which seems incongruous with the action preceding it.

Burning Love, a revenge fantasy which takes the maxim that ‘Love Hurts’, literally, to the extreme, is more successful in approaching the macabre and the dark humour associated with Grand Guignol. However, despite some impressively sardonic performances (especially in the exchanges between Eimear Morrissey and Shane O’Neill), with strategic employment of a smart-phone, YouTube and Whitney Houston, both works approach the 'horror' too tentatively. Thus, the production flags, failing to successfully rouse an increasingly desensitised audience. Ultimately, a diluted Theatre of Horror, that simply isn’t horrific enough.

Star rating: ★★★