A Christmas treat from Stephen Joseph Theatre, this audio recording of Haunting Julia by Alan Ayckbourn is a simple ghost story.

Ayckbourn, an abiding favourite with audiences, voices the three male parts as well as directing a narrative in which a grieving father tries to establish why his musical-genius daughter Julia took her own life. It’s seasonal, intriguing and a potential collector’s item.

Always deeply rooted in an English middle class whose ways go largely unchallenged, his comedies are an easy escape from grim reality.

But his ghost stories aim for deeper tensions and drama and in Haunting Julia this is partially realised when father Joe brings together Julia’s ex-boyfriend Andy and local psychic Ken in the very place where she lived and died.

The play has all the ingredients of a heart-breaking story but while we can see what the writer is driving at, its power is never quite harnessed.  

First, there are too many themes — is this merely a traditional, atmospheric ghost story or a more serious study of torment in a child prodigy who inhabits the consciousness only through the memories of others? Or is it a sort of whodunnit?

The tone and style seem to wander, so that we are never sure. Julia herself is indistinct and her nickname Little Miss Mozart unhelpful, suggesting a fantasised musical genius rather than a real person tormented by an innate talent.

And though it is good to hear Ayckbourn himself in such fine fettle, the differentiated voices of the three men don’t add up to three distinct characters of different ages.

The play could have fleshed out the character of Julia rather than emulating a horror B-movie and the gathering of the three men a whole 12 years after Julia’s death doesn't convince.

Why has Joe waited so long to involve Andy? And, given Julia’s status as a celebrated genius, why hasn’t the cause of her death already been debated publicly and privately ad infinitum? Something doesn’t ring true.

Yet at face value, this is an entertaining diversion and fans of the supernatural will have a field day. Easy, if flawed, listening.

Haunting Julia is available on the Stephen Joseph Theatre website from December 1 to January 5