It's no great insight to say people in this country, and probably most of the world, love Jane Austen's stories in the original novels and the many stage and screen adaptations, but maybe we love metatextual Austen just as much: We've had
Lost In Austen,
The Watsons, and now Zoe Cooper's queered-up interpretation of the beloved author's swipe at the lurid gothic novels that were all the rage in her day:
Northanger Abbey isn't the most famous of the books - it was one I never got round to reading, and I don't think I've even seen an adaptation before, given how unfamiliar the story was to me. Then again I'm sure some of the places Cooper takes her heroine would have been unfamiliar to the 18th century author herself, if not outright sent her straight to her fainting couch. Stripped down to a three-person show, Cooper puts Catherine Morland, aka Cath (Rebecca Banatvala) in charge of telling us her own story.
