The main protagonist in Brad Fraser’s new play Snake in Fridge is a house. Owned by a pornography ringleader, inhabited by six characters possessed by personal demons, and witness to the murder of a neophyte drug dealer, this place has its share of bad karma. Caught in the middle of it all is Corbett, the landlord’s nephew, who has blown the rent on drugs and has a very large snake hidden in the fridge. Karma catches up with Corbett, and soon he has a corpse to add to his worries.

Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House – which has spawned a variety of celluloid and theatrical adaptations – this rendition has Fraser’s fingerprints all over it. The dialogue is laced with profanities and graphic sexual content, but given that Fraser’s chosen turf is disaffected souls dealing with urban reality, the dialogue comes across as realistic and natural. Characters don’t have to be likeable in order for a play to work. The question is: does this play work?

Fraser seems more interested in creating gritty, entertaining theatre for the here and now – as opposed to constructing works that transcend time and place – and in this case he largely succeeds. He has clearly matured as a playwright, and abandoned many of the in-your-face-antics that informed his earlier plays. The palpable suspense of Snake in Fridge is not lost on the page, and what Fraser lacks in sensitivity and insight he makes up for with bravado. Any unanswered questions and dangling plotlines can conveniently be passed off as murder/mystery genre conventions, but some readers may not be willing to let Fraser off so easily.