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Matrimony is in the spotlight in Northanger Abbey, Zoe Cooper’s crisp, affectionate take on Jane Austen’s early novel. Young Catherine Morland, a devotee of popular Gothic romances, abandons the confines of her parents’ modest northern vicarage and heads to Bath in search of adventure. “Your company, though very sweet, is too plain, unremarkable and ordinary,” our 17-year-old heroine confidently informs her bemused parents. “I find myself longing for balls.”
Part Gothic satire, part Bildungsroman, it’s delivered here as a story about flirting, fiction and finding yourself between the sheets (of a novel, of course). It’s also about the power of imagination, which is the key to Cooper’s sprightly, gently queered adaptation. Here Cath, star of her own show, marshals her two hard-working fellow performers in a zesty retelling of her life story, beginning with her birth (which obliges Sam Newton to don a skirt and heave away at delivering a stiff cushion — the nearest prop on offer).
Tessa Walker’s production embraces this spirit of invention with alacrity — her three-strong cast bring an almost childlike glee to the task of filling the stage with a social whirl of sweet damsels, gossipy matrons, sleazy soldiers and crusty generals. On Hannah Sibal’s hot-pink set, a clutch of chandeliers, a heap of travelling trunks and a chaise longue are pressed into service as carriages and castles, as Cath negotiates the treacherous social waters of Bath. She falls in love with mild, muslin-loving Henry Tilney, or at least persuades herself she does, fends off the attentions of caddish John Thorpe and forms a close attachment with Thorpe’s sister Isabella (known here as Iz).
This last relationship is at the heart of this staging: the bond between the two is clearly something more than friendship. And while Cath fondly imagines herself as the heroine of a Gothic novel, Iz searches in vain for her own likeness on the page. In Cooper’s version, she finds it, and what has been a jokey piece about representation in fiction takes on a serious note.
It’s nimbly performed. Rebecca Banatvala brings a lovely, open zeal to Catherine, combining sweet naivety with a stout sense of her own worth. AK Golding has both spirit and sadness as Iz, and Sam Newton spins between characters with spit-spot timing. It all gets too convoluted for its own good in the final section and the effort of keeping up the style begins to show. But this is another sweet, smart stage response to Austen’s genius.
★★★★☆
To February 24, orangetreetheatre.co.uk