I've seen Alfred Hitchcock's famed movie "Rebecca," which was based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier, several times, but I hadn't seen the play, which du Maurier also adapted, until Saturday. It turns out that the movie and play are very different but both highly satisfying.

In the movie, which featured performances by Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine and an indelible Judith Anderson as the menacing Mrs. Danvers, we are immersed in a gloomy, Gothic world bearing an unforgettable Hitcockian stamp. In the stage play, which is being mounted by Good Company Players in a nicely shaped production, we get less of that "total immersion movie experience" that you might associate with "Rebecca." The atmospheric machinations of the play are far less strident than the movie. What you do get with the play, however, is a crisp and chilling cerebral experience that can be as tense as the movie in its own way.

We never meet the title character in the play, of course, because she's dead. Yet she is an important presence. As the play opens, we're introduced to Maxim de Winter (a strong Patrick Allan Tromborg), a somewhat stuffy member of the English landed gentry, and his second wife (a compelling Jessica Rose Knotts), who have just returned to the de Winter estate, Manderley, after their whirlwind wedding and honeymoon. Obviously shocked at this new bride is the domestic staff of the estate, for whom the drowning death of the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca, is still fresh in their minds.

We don't know much about the second Mrs. de Winter (not even her first name), which adds to the general mystery of the new marriage. What we do know is that she is young, shy, awkward and intimidated by the higher social class of her new husband. We learn that she was traveling as a "companion" to an older woman in the South of France, which is where she met Maxim, and there are hints that she is out of her element when it comes to social niceties, but more perplexing questions -- did she marry for love or money? -- are left intriguingly unanswered.

With its setting of a foreboding estate and gloomy household, it would be a temptation for a director to turn "Rebecca" into one or two steps above Gothic camp. But Nancy Miller is meticulous and even in terms of tone and above all characters. "Rebecca" features one of the most famous villainnesses in movie history, the incomparable housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (a wonderful Tessa Cavalletto), and it would have been easy for both director and actress to portray this troubled woman, who had an obsession with Rebecca, into a caricature of menace.

But Cavalletto gives a nuanced performance that both hints at Mrs. Danvers' fixations and also shows her side of the story, so to speak. She's helped by a production design that sets a glum tone without being too garish about it. When we first meet Mrs. Danvers, she's descending a staircase, and the first thing we see, thanks to Andrea Henrickson's lighting design, is her shadow preceding her. David Pierce's impressively grandiose set captures the character of an imposing English country house. (I love the painted "brick wall" behind the stairs; rather than crisply defined, it's a little hazy, as if the farther you get into this mysterious house, the murkier it becomes.)

Standouts in the cast include a very fine Landon Weiszbrod, who carves out a chilling presence with his role as Rebecca's cousin; Luke Davis and Karen Raymon, who play Max's amiably eccentric brother-in-law and sister; and in a small, choice (and perfectly cast) role, Frank Insignia as a boat builder. Earthy, intent and above all authentic, the minutes that Insignia are on stage are top-notch. I could have even imagined Hitchcock himself casting him in one of his films.