Madeleine Burton reviews OVO's production of Little Women at the Roman Theatre Festival in St Albans.
Little Women is generating a big response at the Roman Theatre at Verulamium – and rightly so.
It is OVO’s third production in the long-running drama festival and the standard that the St Albans-based company has demonstrated so far is more than matched by this adaptation of the Louisa May Alcott classic.
The novel has been adapted for the stage by Steph Allison, Amy Connery and Sophie Swithinbank and the former two also act as directors of a very slick and enjoyable production.
Let’s face it the tale of the March sisters is not an easy one to adapt for the stage.
But the giggling, gushy girls at the start of the play develop into far more interesting characters as it progresses.
Like many OVO productions, music plays an important part, not just in breaking up the dialogue but also capturing the mood of four girls whose stultifying family life is ready to be shrugged off as they approach womanhood.
And some scenes are particularly beautifully staged, particularly when Amy falls through the ice while skating and is rescued by their neighbour Laurie.
The sisters are the key performers and all four get into the soul of their characters from Lucy Crick as the loving Beth, who makes an early marriage which is not what she expected, to the fragile and caring Beth played by Anastasia Raymond.
Jane Withers is perfectly cast as the precocious youngest child Amy who could have turned out so badly but is totally redeemed by the end.
It is second sister Jo who is at the heart of the whole play and Katie Friedli Walton is a revelation in the part, from her heart-wrenching rejection of the lovelorn Laurie, played by Gabriel Fogarty-Graveson, to her relationship with Professor Francis Bhaer played by Faith Turner – maybe a little too 21st century!
The accomplished cast is completed by James Douglas, Boyd Rogers – who joins the musicians at times to play the double bass – and Kat-Anne Rogers.
The production is perhaps a little too long at two hours, 45 minutes and could have benefitted from a slightly shorter second half.
But Little Women is one helluva novel to squeeze into a stage play, so such criticisms seem trifling.
Little Women runs until Sunday, August 14 at the Roman Theatre off Bluehouse Hill and tickets can be obtained from www.ovo.org.uk
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