Orange Tree theatre, London
This streamlined adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel gets right to the heart of her characters, who face heartbreak and loss but gain from the strength of female friendship
There’s more than one worry for any new dramatisation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel to contend with. There is the risk of this story, set among the unmarried women and widows of a fictional English town, being considered Middlemarch lite – and overshadowed by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s luminous adaptation of the George Eliot novel, currently running in Stratford-Upon-Avon. Then there is the 2007 BBC adaptation of Cranford, which threw every national treasure at it, trowelling on the loveable humour and sentiment as it did so.
This production, however, co-created by Lin Coghlan, Shaun McKenna and Josh Roche, bypasses all those dangers by leaning into theatricality – and sheer good acting. The script is by Coghlan and McKenna, who previously adapted The Forsyte Saga, staged last year by the RSC. They confidently fillet the original and also add their own little inventions.