I must admit that I am not well-read in the works of Conan Doyle, but I would say that this is a good script, well-performed , produced, and directed, with a nice foreboding tone. I appreciate the fact that Mr Brown seems to have directed the actors away from using any kind of bogus British accents, but instead simply suggests England with a gentle, cultivated dialect------Mr. Cartwright (Played by Guy Sorrell? Sorry, I'm not sure.) is especially wonderful--a really fine, well-modulated character performance.

The dramatic conceit of this mysterious Black Door, and the thing that lies behind it, seems an especially good choice for audio drama---a vaguely threatening image, described only briefly by the playwright, allowed to grow more and more sinister in the listener's mind as the characters in the play react to it.

If there are any shortcomings, I believe they lie not with the script but with the plot of the story from which it was adapted. I mean, it's pretty obvious from the beginning what must lie behind the door. No great mystery there. Then again, perhaps this story is not so much about mystery as it is about the suspense that builds when WE know what's behind the door and the characters don't---Hitchcock's McGuffin. I couldn't help wondering, though, how people could have lived in the house all that time and never noticed the smell of a corpse in the room upstairs. :? That's quite a gaping hole, in my opinion. Does the fault lie with the adaptation or the original story? Any opinions from listeners who've read the story would be most welcome.

In the meantime, I'll have to read it for myself and find out.