It is about Julia Lukin, a nineteen-year-old brilliant musician who committed suicide twelve years earlier, who haunts the three men closest to her, through both the supernatural and in their memories.

He considered that the ability to make audiences jump was little to do with special effects and a lot to do with acting and a tense storyline.

The version in the round originally had the problem that the door to Julia's room that flies open dramatically at the end was invisible to part of the audience.

He pushes a button, and a recorded voice of an actress as Julia Lukin speak, fondly talking about her room and her music.

Andy listens patiently and ignores some tactless remarks about his wife, but hints that he wants to get back to his family soon.

Undeterred, Joe talks about Julia's childhood and her discovery, giving away that he dominated the lives of his daughter, and, also his wife, Dolly, who died recently.

The guest, Ken Chase, arrives and introduces himself to Andy, as mortuary attendant who had "an enforced career change".

He opens the original door to the room but finds only a brick wall, for the other side now houses an air-conditioning plant.

Asking for something close to Julia, he picks up the teddy bear, and (after setting off an alarm the first time), he reacts vigorously with emotion.

Ken explains that on the afternoon before she died, she seemed a different person, saying, for the first time, she loved her parents, and he now wonders if it was her way of saying goodbye.

A discordant piano starts playing, and Joe, shouting for Julia, flings open the door only to see the wall.

On that day, he went to her house to tell Julia he was seeing Kay and probably wouldn't see her again, only to find her waiting for him, room tidied, hair brushed and bed made.

When he went ahead and told her, she pleaded with him, and Andy, angry that she hadn't cared about his feelings all the time, left, went to a party, and got drunk.

Returning to the music and the door, Andy, who has consistently dismissed supernatural explanations, suggests Joe may have set this all up himself.

Simplifying the events of the previous night to "a row", Andy says he went back in the morning thinking he should make things up.

[10] In 2012, Haunting Julia made its North American premiere at The Little Theatre of Norfolk,[11] with Joel Nathan King as Joe, Ryan McIntire as Andy and Philip Odango as Ken.

Although the critics of the original production were unanimous in recognising the play as a new departure for Ayckbourn, the reviews were heavily polarised.

[13] Kate Bassett for The Times drew comparisons with the child Wolfgang Mozart and the death of Kurt Cobain, although she had some doubts about the ending.

[14] However, Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph held the opinion that the play aimed to be both a ghost story or a study of grief and failed to do either, although he liked the character of Ken and the final ten minutes.

[16] It has been suggested[5] that the difference in opinion may have been down to reviewers being split between those who favoured Ayckbourn's move towards more contemporary themes, and those who preferred his earlier plays concentrating on social realism.