1/3. Catherine Morland, a naïve country girl, is taken to Bath by Mr and Mrs Allen - rich landowners and friends of her clergyman father. But her arrival in Bath in such noteworthy company leads to a misunderstanding about her fortune, a misunderstanding that grows until she is invited by the wealthy, but avaricious, General Tilney for an indefinite stay at Northanger Abbey.
2/3. Catherine receives an invitation to stay at Northanger Abbey. Delighted to leave Bath in the company of Henry Tilney and his sister, she is nevertheless wary of their father - the terrifying General Tilney.
3/3. Catherine's suspicions about the tyrannical General Tilney grow and she is determined to explore Northanger Abbey and discover its hidden secrets.

C a s t

Amanda Root as Jane Austen
Emily Wachter as Catherine
David Harewood as Henry
Julia McKenzie as Mrs Allen
Claire Skinner as Isabella
Saskia Reeves as Eleanor
Jenny Agutter as Mrs Thorpe
Jonathan Keeble as John Thorpe
Shiv Grewal as James
John Rowe as Mr Allen
Gerard McDermott as Mr Morland
Susan Jameson as Mrs Morland
John Shrapnel as General Tilney

Production Credits

Apapted for Radio by Domonic Power
Music by Peter Wiegold
Producer/Director Pam Fraser Solomon

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Ep. 1: 18 September 2005; Ep. 2: 25 September 2005; Ep. 3: 2 October 2005

Review

Putting together a new production of Northanger Abbey is not for the superstitious. It seems to be the theatrical equivalent of opening Tutankhamen’s tomb, even if the curse it brings with it is not sudden and mysterious death but the threat of bad reviews. Of all Jane Austen’s novels, this is considered the one most resistant to adaptation for screen, stage or radio. BBC Radio’s last original production was more than 40 years ago, although in 1972 it broadcast what appears to have been an unmemorable radio version of a theatre production of Austen’s satire on the Gothic novel. Claire Skinner as Isabella and Jenny Agutter as Mrs Thorpe in Northanger Abbey on BBC Radio 4 Photo: BBC / Rolf Marriott So have producer Pam Fraser Solomon and dramatist Dominic Power risen to the difficult challenge with this three-parter? As yet, it is hard to say. The opening episode covered the sequences in Bath, where penniless ingenue Catherine Morland is escorted by rich friends, the Allens. Who could fail to be charmed by the social pirouetting of Bath at full throng - the snobberies, the flirtations, the attempts to rise in society, all set against Catherine’s wider-eyed and naive incomprehension of love and life. The vital test of this production will be when the action moves to gloomy Northanger Abbey. 2004 Carlton Hobbs winner Emily Wachter is sweetly unaffected as Catherine but David Harewood as the hero, Henry Tilney, failed to make a huge impression. There is time, though, for reassessment, as the character does not come into his own until the action moves to his home turf, the eponymous Abbey. Catherine’s mentor, Mrs Allen, was beautifully flashed out by Julia McKenzie, who added an occasional sharpness of tone to a character normally seen as anodyne. The exploitative duo, Isabella Thorpe and her mother, were, in performances by Claire Skinner and Jenny Agutter, delightfully dastardly as they home in on Catherine and her brother, whom they assumed to be in line for the childless Allens’ riches. Austen is so often taken as the template for romantic fiction but the harsh facts of economics - survival of the fittest more often meant marrying for money, with love viewed as a distraction - were well illustrated in this thoroughly enjoyable opening instalment.

Published by 'The Stage' Monday 19 September 2005 at 15:50 written by Moira Petty