Jane Austen may not have written that, but it is essentially the theme of Northanger Abbey, her satire on the Gothic novel, and the liking of just such young girls for the frisson of reading about such nibblings and other horrors,. Christoph Nonn’s adaptation of the novel for the stage directed by him for the Trier English Drama at Trier’s TUFA large hall, preserves the theme as well as the characters and plotline, without being too tightly bound to literal text and action.

Of course much of the original remains (though not the 98% the same adapter/director claimed for Pride and Prejudice a few years ago): enough of the Austenian wit remains to satisfy anyone but the most obsessive of purists. Possibly surprisingly, given where we are, the play maintains the author’s belief that such happenings could never come to pass in England, whatever may be the case in, for instance, Italy, and the south of France, as the protagonists demonstrate by humming God Save the King (this being 1800 or thereabouts).

Outside that however, the evening’s motto is obviously “Go for the laughs, and stick to what the audience will recognise”. Luckily it all works, and I suspect the subversive in Jane Austen would agree.

So what are we left with? The same major characters who are all except two established in a telescoped first act that covers all of the preliminary goings on at Bath, effectively in one long ballroom scene allowing us to meet:

• the goodies: Catherine Morland (Kristina Heitzer), the young girl with the threatened throat, and the predilection for horror stories, her mother (Sabine Sieben) and mother’s friend, Mrs Allen (Anna Weinand) and brother James (Christian Lühr).

• The baddies: Mrs Thorpe (Nike Larra) an alleged friend of Mrs Morland, her son John (Mathias Zimmer) and daughter Isabella (Annika Toll)

• And the I’m-not-so-sure-about Tilney family: the General (Thomas Dewitz) and his sons the Captain (Thomas Wahrlich) and Henry (André Manchen), and daughter Eleanor (Johanna Lauer).

At this point a disastrous outcome seems likely: that the evidently fortune-hunting John and Isabella will emerge successfully marrying our heroine Catherine and our by this time favourite comedian James. Even though our card has been firmly marked for Henry, Catherine is suspicious especially of the General, large, ageing, menacing and given to stomping across the floor in a threatening manner to red alert stage music.

But the action moves on to the Abbey itself, the ancient medieval home of the Tilneys, which Catherine surprisingly accepts an invitation to visit, partly because she has fallen for Henry, but mostly because it’s the kind of place she loves to read about (in the book, like the novels of Ann Radcliffe; in the play like the novels Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker).

The difference the second act brings then is simply demonstrated by two characters and a new stage set. Christian Lühr reappears heavily disguised as the ancient bent and wizened retainer Dorothy who knows all the secrets of the family. Nike Larra also reappears as the late Mrs Tilney, she of the mysterious death. And the new stage set is heavily bedecked with crosses and other guardian symbols: the play probably has more strings of garlic on stage at one time than any predecessor – one way of achieving immortality, if rather a smelly one.

Mrs Tilney appears in the quasi flesh several times as Catherine, abetted by the crone Dorothy, imagines a series of ways in which she might have died, each of them more horrific than the one before, and all centred upon a felonious (or worse) interpretation of the character of the General.

So the play parallels the development of the book, and indeed ends with a stupendous piece of deus ex machinery based on the similar if slightly more probable machina that marks the end of the book.

What distinguishes the two is not just the anachronisms that zoom past like flares from Roman candles, or the emphasis on humour (Miss Austen was just as concerned to poke fun at her contemporaries as the play is to poke a more exaggerated fun at modern horror stories) but a simple substitution of motives. In Austen, the motive of the baddies and the suspected motive of the not-so-sures are obtaining money; here there is added to that the drinking of blood.

 One can easily liken the characters of the Bath ballrooms as metaphorical vampires: why not show them, at least in Catherine’s distorted imagination, as vampires?

Christoph Nonn and the Trier English Drama Group can’t see why not. And succeed in making their point.

In that attempt Kristina Heitzer presents us with an innocent heroine who doesn’t believe people are bad, but shivers delightedly at the thought they might be, and her mother and Mrs Allen are all that one expects a heroine’s mother and friends to be, plus coming up with the occasional appropriate Austenian barb.

Among the rest, Christian Lühr is unstoppably dominating as he clowns through his two parts: possibly rather as an unguided missile, but hitting its targets. Annika Toll is as usual convincingly empty-headed and flirtatious as Isabella while as her brother Mathias Zimmer is certainly offensive enough, but manages to be so in a rather stereotypically Teutonic fashion rather than the stereotypical fashion of an offensive English cad; as their mother Nike Larra has a nice touch of subtle malignancy.

As the fearsome General, Thomas Dewitz, is suitably large enough to qualify as monstrous, and project menace. One is also not surprised to find him swayed by cupidity, if not bloodlust. One of course has to sympathise with anyone who has to die at their husband’s hand five or six times, but Nike Larra bears the bruises well.

Their son Henry makes a perfect foil for Catherine, and his siblings Eleanor and the Captain, also despatch their parts competently, including in that the all-important dénouement on Eleanor’s part that brings the whole proceedings to a satisfactory end.

It’s true that a title that would better encapsulate the show might be “Buffy Takes The Waters”, but it would be wrong to think of that as a criticism, as the opening night audience made plain.

Anyway since the performance repeats on Sunday Feb 12 (matinee) and Tuesday Feb 14, you can judge for yourself. Cf http://www.englishdrama-trier.de/current-production