Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott at Theatre 3 is a tense thriller

Director Jordan Best was attracted to Wait Until Dark because "It's 100 per cent thriller."

Frederick (Dial M For Murder) Knott's 1966 play - the sixth in Rep's 2016-17 season - isn't a mystery or a whodunit, she says, but a good, thrilling story ("I like feeling scared") with a strong female lead and plenty of mounting tension.

Jenna Roberts knew she had a lot of preparation ahead when cast in the lead role of Susy.

"I'm playing blind. As a sighted person, that's quite challenging to do. I realised early on how really reliant on sight we are," Roberts says. She used a blindfold at times in rehearsals to get used to moving around the stage without sight and says one of the biggest challenges when playing "blind" was concentrating on not responding with her eyes when someone was talking to her.

"I always love a challenge ...I've never done a crime thriller before."

Susy is a woman blinded in a car accident still adjusting to sightlessness and her recent marriage to Sam (played by Euan Bowen), an ex-army professional photographer, who is keen to help her achieve independence.

"He encourages her to do things on her own," Roberts says.

So Susy has been developing techniques to get around her apartment, making sure she knows where everything is, as well as learning how to deal with the world at large. But soon something will happen that will test her courage and her resourcefulness to the limit.

When Sam brings home a doll to their basement apartment as a favour to a woman he met on a business trip, it seems innocent enough. But left alone in the apartment, Susy is visited by three men who want that doll - which, unbeknownst to Susy and Sam, is full of heroin - and have concocted an elaborate scheme to get it from her. Harry Roat (Zach Raffan) is the leader and he has blackmailed con men Mike (Riley Bell) and Croker (Nelson Blattman) into carrying out the plan with him.

Roberts says, "I read the play to see how the con unfolds and thought, 'It's clever, I've got to do this.'"

The men think it will be easy - a blind woman, on her own, should be an easy mark. But Susy does have an ally - Gloria (Annabel Foulds), a young girl in one of the other apartments. More importantly, while she's initially confused, Susy is clever and perceptive, Roberts says, noticing inconsistencies in what she's being told and patterns in the behaviour of the men - and her hearing, heightened since the loss of her sight, is a big help in the battle of wills and wits. And so, it will ironically turn out, is her very sightlessness as day fades into night and she is able to turn what seemed like a liability into an asset.

Best says, "The dark can be a bit unsettling. One of Jenna's fears is the dark and the thought of being blind is very scary because it's dark."

Roberts says, Wait Until Dark is a very complicated play to stage, quite apart from having to act blind.

"There are a lot of props and it's a complex set," she says. Wait Until Dark is a play where precision and timing are crucial: actions and objects being in the right place at the right time are even more important than usual so a lot of rehearsal is devoted to getting things just right including coordinating the music by Matt Webster and the lighting by Cynthia Jolley-Rogers.

Roberts says, "It's got to be very specific, very clean: there's a lot of detail, a lot to take on."

Best and Roberts worked together at Rep on Macbeth last year for which Roberts recently won a CAT Award as best actress in a play as Lady Macbeth. Best also won the CAT Award for best director of a play for Pigeonhole Productions' Playhouse Creatures. which also won awards for best ensemble in a play (including Roberts) and best production of a play. Now they are reunited once more, in a classic thriller that plays on one of the most universal of fears - fear of the dark.