Chichester threw up two surprises on Tuesday night. The first was that Christopher Fry, whom I had assumed was long dead and buried, is alive and well and a remarkably spry-looking 95-year-old. The second was that his 1948 play, set in an English village during a 14th-century witch hunt, is alive and well, too, in Samuel West's intelligent and beguiling production.

Best known now for Margaret Thatcher's pun on the title in her famous "the lady's not for turning" speech, Fry's play is generally held up as the kind of dusty old verse drama that was swept away by the angry young playwrights of the 1950s. Well, Fry's ornate, burnished language might not be to everyone's taste, but his play is hardly dusty. It is like glimpsing a flash of daffodils on a cold March morning. It has charm, compassion and a roaring wit, and in its central character, Thomas Mendip, a man who arrives at the house of the mayor demanding to be hanged immediately, it has the bitter despair of one who has stared into the abyss and knows that his tragedy is to have survived. Fry's play, of course, was written in the wake of two world wars that wiped out millions.

Rather like a comic version of The Crucible, Fry's play pits prejudice, bigotry and human stupidity against openness, love and thinking for yourself rather than going with the mob. Its message is summed up by Jennet Jourdemayne, accused by the villagers of turning the local rag-and-bone man into a dog, and condemned to be hanged, when she announces: "I believe in the human mind." Fry's play may show us the worst of human nature, but it also celebrates the best, the things that set us apart from the animals.

West's sharp, unshowy production serves the play well, and throws up sharp, unshowy performances where no one is a star and everyone works together with true generosity. But the real surprise is that the verse turns out to be such an affable and accessible form and that the language is so exciting. Relax into it and it is like having your mind stroked by a velvet glove.

· Until June 15. Box office: 01243 781312.