Top-class love story premiere at Pitlochry Festival Theatre

The Theatre in the Hills’ six appeal is now complete with the world premiere of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.

This adaptation by Janys Chambers joins the five other topclass productions now running on the Pitlochry stage.

It is essentially a love story, set in the 1850s, amid the troubles of the industrial revolution with a backdrop of a cotton mill and its smoking slums – a setting full of redolence from Amanda Stoodley.

It’s also a tale of divisions – between the industrial north and the rural gentry of the south; of capitalist manufacturers and the poverty of their workers. But a beautifully-crafted scene under the direction of Elizabeth Newman proves there are no divisions when

it comes to grief and the loss of a loved one.

Young Margaret Hale (a commanding performance from Claire Dargo) is shocked when her father leaves his ministerial role as a matter of conscience and takes his wife and daughter up north at the suggestion of an old friend, who owns property and a cotton mill.

But strife is rife as John Thornton (Harry Long), master of the mills, rules with a clenched fist, but his heart is opened with reluctant admiration when Margaret bursts on the scene with support for the workers, although appalled at their violence.

Following the deaths of her mother and young Bessie, a victim of cotton dust inhalation whom she had befriended, Margaret returns south, having spurned the advances of Thornton.

While the first half bristles with action, the second act concentrates on the burgeoning relationship – or, rather, the lack of it.

There are tender performances from Barbara Hockaday (Bessie) and Alexander Bean as her dad, while Richard Colvin leads from the front musically.

The final staging of North and South is the matinee on September 25.