Hazel Woodus is not a heroine for the Countryside Alliance. Wild, untamed and curiously innocent of the birds and the bees for a young girl brought up in a rural farming community, beautiful Hazel faints when the pig is killed and is moved by the plight of the fox. Soon she is the quarry of both the parson, who wants to keep her innocence intact, and the hard-drinking, fox-hunting squire, who wants his wicked way with her.
It is a very long time since the theatre has seen such a magnificent display of bosom-heaving, bodice-ripping, knee-trembling storytelling as we get in Helen Edmundson's earthy and clever adaptation of Mary Webb's 1917 novel for Shared Experience. It sweeps you up and away as the story unfolds with sexual tension tempered with the iron cruelty of what humans do to each other. Webb's novel was written during the first world war, and although it makes no mention of the savagery of the trenches, it is suffused with the horror of a world that God seems to have deserted. Edmundson's adaptation and Nancy Meckler's productionmake this abundantly clear.
The result is something akin to Mills and Boon filtered through the bleak sensibility of Samuel Beckett and the tragic passion of Lorca. Although the evening is long, the headlong rush to disaster is always compulsive. The show has all the Shared Experience hallmarks: the actors are as much in touch with their bodies as their heads, and are able to make you feel that you've gazed into the very souls of the characters.
The ensemble is top-notch. Natalia Tena makes Hazel's innocence fascinating rather than merely irritating. From the moment when he first peers blindly into her face, Simon Wilson is impressive as the parson who cannot see what is in front of his eyes, and Jay Villiers's squire is a wolf who, having mercilessly eyed up a lamb, then discovers that lunch has given him terrible indigestion.
· Until June 5. Box office: 08700 500511.
