Northanger Abbey
Your Chance Productions
Duchess Theatre
5th January 2026

The Georgians come to the Duchess Theatre this week with this adaptation, by Matthew Francis, of the wonderful Northanger Abbey. Published in 1818, after Jane Austen’s death, it was written some years before and is full of the humour, wit and social commentary that she had honed as a juvenile writer - through her prolific output for her family - between the ages of 11 and 18. It’s got everything Austen fans love: a sympathetic but flawed heroine, a self assured hero who is willing to change, a bore, a cad, a middle aged social climber, a flighty friend and an upper class snob who will listen to no-one. Added to that is the context of the absurdity and sensationalism of popular Gothic literature, a genre which strongly influences how the heroine interprets her life and social interactions. It’s a delicious mix.

Catherine Moreland is seventeen, living a quiet life in a parsonage with her parents and many siblings, enlivened only by the thrilling Gothic novels she reads. Invited by her wealthy and rather superficial neighbour, Mrs Allen, to spend a season in Bath, she arrives full of naivete, but also with the assurance that everything will work out just like it does in her books.

Introduced to the lively Isabella Thorpe and her loquacious brother John, Catherine is thrilled to realise her new friends already know her brother James, who quickly becomes engaged to Isabella. So far so good, especially as the charming Henry Tilney has caught Catherine’s eye; two happy matches must surely follow. Not so, as Catherine has to avoid the unwanted attentions of the tedious John, watch her trusted friend Isabella flirt with a perceived better catch and then suffer the shame of her own most embarrassing behaviour...

Samantha Hempsall plays Catherine Morland beautifully, a huge part with lots of dialogue which she delivers flawlessly and with charming characterisation. When Catherine is invited to Northanger Abbey by Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor we see the effect of her reading upon her, as she imagines all sort of Gothic horrors within the stone walls, including the murder of the Tilney’s late mother. Sensitively played and evocatively created.

Using minimal scenery, just a few draped chairs and odd bits of furniture, the director Jessica Morgan-McClean relies on sumptuous costumes, background sound and lighting to create place, time and atmosphere. The bustle and sounds of the Bath Assembly Rooms accompany Alice Goodall’s wonderful Georgian dances, which the cast must have worked hard to learn. The supposed Gothic horror of Northanger Abbey is achieved by red lighting which takes us into Catherine’s fantasy world; masked characters add to the horror. Masking would have been familiar to the Georgians, so using it as a device to enable cast members to play more than one part is inspired. Jane Austen would surely have approved!

Darren Taylor plays the dashing Henry Tilney, Rachel Augustsson is a very lively and capricious Isabella Thorpe; Martin Weston shines as the lumpen John Thorpe; Alice Goodall is an endearing Eleanor Tilney; James Taylor is the earnest James Morland; Rachel Bates plays both the vacuous Mrs Allen and the forbidding Annette; Dan Bates is a splendidly awful General Tilney and Kourtney White plays both Mrs Thorpe and Mrs Morland.

A huge undertaking for this creative team and cast, as this is a long, wordy play that needs to move quickly through crisply delivered dialogue. More projection is needed from some of the actors, especially as the ceiling fans at the Duchess are so loud in the auditorium; some dialogue was completely lost. Some lighting also missed the spot at this first performance: these technical issues are ones that will be sorted out following feedback, letting this production truly shine.

It’s one that has stayed with me, reliving memories of the first time I read the novel at school and rekindling a love of the wit, warmth and glorious story telling of Jane Austen. I’m off to read it again.

Northanger Abbey and this lively cast of Georgians is at the Duchess Theatre until Wednesday 7 January.