Adapted many times, most famously on screen by Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 Gothic novel Rebecca becomes a visually striking psychodrama in this new MTC production.

The company’s Artistic Director Anne-Louise Sarks directs and adapts, and has gathered some of MTC’s finest frequent collaborators including Tony and Olivier award-winning designer Marg Horwell, lighting designer Paul Jackson and leading lady Nikki Shiels.

Rebecca: Nikki Shiels and Pamela Rabe. Photo © Pia Johnson

Sarks is fairly faithful to the novel, including the interwar setting most evident in Shiels’ perfectly clipped English accent. She plays an unnamed, naive young woman, who is paid companion to Mrs Van Hopper before a whirlwind courtship sees her married to recently widowed Maxim de Winter.

At his grand seaside estate, Manderley, she’s troubled by constant comparisons to and reminders of the first Mrs de Winter, Rebecca, who reportedly drowned. She is undermined by housekeeper Mrs Danvers, who remains devoted to her former mistress, and concludes the emotionally distant Maxim is too.

Eventually the true nature of the seemingly perfect Rebecca and the circumstances of her death are revealed. A medical appointment she had on the day of her death delivers a long, thrilling double twist in the novel, but is strangely rushed and underplayed here.

Arguably the pivotal costume-ball episode, in which the woman unwittingly dresses up as Rebecca, is also hindered by haste, though Sarks is all-in on the blurring of the two Mrs de Winters in the woman’s increasingly feverish mind.

Rebecca: Nikki Shiels and Pamela Rabe. Photo © Pia Johnson

Greatly supported by the design team, Sarks’s interpretation of Rebecca is a psychological one, unfolding in the fragmentary, surreal manner of dreams, memories and mental disturbance.

For the most part, it’s a fascinating approach, but as this Rebecca reaches a nightmarish crescendo of short, rapid, visually and aurally busy scenes, du Maurier’s thriller plot becomes secondary to the woman’s psychological state. Those familiar with the novel may feel tension is wanting.

As with last year’s A Streetcar Named Desire, also directed by Sarks, Shiels is this production’s primary, magnetic force. At first softly spoken and physically drawing into herself, she increasingly reveals the hidden strength and darkness of her character in myriad ways, from tone of voice to the way she moves and holds her body.

Unsettlingly still, with a measured and manipulative way of speaking, Pamela Rabe is perfect as Mrs Danvers, so her brilliant interpretation of two other very different minor characters is a bonus. Her social-climbing Mrs Van Hopper is irresistibly vile, starting with the bossy mid-century American accent.

Rebecca: Stephen Phillips and Nikki Shiels. Photo © Pia Johnson

Stephen Phillips is suitably understated in the almost self-effacing role of Maxim, courting with low-energy charm before becoming emotionally and physically unavailable. Toby Truslove rounds out the cast nicely in the polar-opposite roles of Maxim’s kind, slightly nerdy agent Frank, and Rebecca’s entitled, sleazy cousin Jack.

Horwell’s costumes are both true to character and eye-catching period pieces, especially several of Rebecca’s stylish garments, presented on mannequins in her shrine-like former bedroom.

Recalling the incomplete nature of dreams and memories, Horwell’s sets are often just a few or even one significant object isolated and highlighted in the stage’s often dark expanse.

The more detailed Manderley bedroom set includes a massive tilted, hovering mirror that underscores the Mrs de Winter duality, and sumptuous floral arrangements that give way to surreal invasive vines suggesting a mind overwhelmed. In various scenes, more mannequins draped with white fabric are like silent ghosts of Rebecca.

Hats off to the stagehands, who change the sets with miraculous speed and silence behind large black screens that open and close, and later under cover of increasingly frequent lighting blackouts.

Rebecca: Nikki Shiels. Photo © Pia Johnson

Co-composers and sound designers Grace Ferguson and Joe Paradise Lui play with the mind, from barely audible bell chimes that go on and on, to harsh, nerve-jangling sounds.

While this new take on Rebecca doesn’t always succeed, it is nevertheless an intriguing exploration and manifestation of a troubled mind in no small part because of the design team’s wondrous work and some excellent performances.

Rebecca plays at The Sumner, Melbourne, until 5 November.