Summat for everyone in a tale of Brokeback Yorkshire

The York Realist (Donmar Warehouse) Verdict: Nostalgia on the farm ★★★★✩

PETER GILL’S bittersweet yorkshire love story is about a buff young farmer who falls for a lad from London in the Sixties.

It’s an agreeably old-fashioned play, written in 2002 but which could easily be 30 years older. The setting — a cottage on the Moors — is deeply nostalgic, with an old range cooker, low beams, pressed tablecloth and outside lav.

But it’s the characters that Gill really makes us love, with Ben Batt and Jonathan Bailey giving touching performances as the two young men who meet while working on a production of mystery plays in york.

Around them, Gill packs a homely set of characters including Lesley nicol as the clean and brisk Methodist mother fussing over her hunky, but steadfastly single, son.

Katie West also shines as a bookish local girl who turns out to be an emotional catalyst in one of many finely judged moments in Robert Hastie’s engrossing production.

A really lovely show that should be received as fondly in Sheffield’s Crucible next month as it will be this month in London.