It's rumoured that Hitler earmarked Leeds' notorious Quarry Hill flats for his northern command centre once the conquest of Britain was complete. Fortunately, the invasion never materialised and they built the West Yorkshire Playhouse instead.
The Playhouse maintains a complex relationship with the historic slope on which it is sited. In the years since it opened, one old man could always be found occupying the same table in the cafeteria, at approximately the same spot where his living room used to be. Nor was the hill unused to boisterous displays of public entertainment: in the middle ages, it was a popular spot for ducking witches.
The West Yorkshire Playhouse has always excelled at vast, egalitarian exercises in community theatre, having produced such stirring spectacles as Pilgermann and Carnival Messiah. It is to the theatre's credit that it never sells its non-professional performers short; production standards remain as slick as for any main stage presentation, and Richard Taylor's fine score is delivered by an outstanding band.
Above all, Steven Downs's direction accommodates all-comers without ever losing sight of its responsibility to provide lucid and engaging storytelling. There are many stories to tell, but Downs avoids simply stringing them all end-to-end, opting for a fluid structure in which various historical plotlines unfold and resolve.
There's the old chap in the cafe, for instance, revealed to be an émigré bound for the new world who missed his train to Liverpool. Then there's the tale of a perfidious mill-owner's daughter who betrayed a luddite plot (fetchingly played as flickering Victorian melodrama) and the story of Nellie, the smelly pariah, and her inevitable cleansing courtesy of the ducking stool.
There's enough vigour in this production to suggest that the evolution of Quarry Hill is far from over. But as one of the characters points out: "They'll 'ave t'knock bloody theatre down first."
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 0113 2137700
