The woman stands alone on the edge of the Cobb in Lyme Regis, an isolated figure swathed in cloak and hood, staring out over an endless grey sea and sky. There is no getting away from the movie or from that iconic image of Meryl Streep in this, the first ever stage version of John Fowles' 1969 novel.
His book works on many levels, filtering the 19th century novel though mid-20th century consciousness, and mixing romance with Darwin, Marx and Freud to tell the story of the poor but educated fallen woman Sarah Woodruff who becomes the erotic obsession of the fossil-hunting gentleman, Charles Smithson. For the film version screenwriter Harold Pinter solved the problem of how to dramatise a novel whose inner life is largely in the footnotes, by creating a framing device of a story within a story; here adaptor Mark Healy matches Fowles' playfulness by cunningly embedding the writer as a major character in his own narrative.
The characters sometimes stop to take the writer's advice, and at others brush him aside entirely as if they have taken on a life of their own. A tottering pile of books by a desk underlines the fact that this is a story about the creative act of storytelling. Fowles' novel unpeels layer upon layer like an onion, but Kate Saxon's production largely operates on two levels, "the heart and the head", with Libby Watson's design offering a couple of raised steel platforms that represent not just Lyme Regis and its surrounding wild places, but also the romantic and the rational, the conscious and unconscious.
Most theatre productions are at their best in their quieter, uncluttered moments, but Saxon's is always most compelling when more than one thing is going on. It often can't escape its own well-upholstered bodice, but when it rips free it is like a whirlwind that turns the characters inside out so that it feels as if you can see hearts beating, blood pumping, brains turning. A concert in Lyme Regis, Sarah and Charles' tightly choreographed lust, and a scene where Sarah disrobes as Charles' doll-like fiancee Ernestina gets dressed, all not only have real passion but hold society up to the mirror and find it wanting.
If the show had more courage in these Shared Experience style convictions, it might be very good indeed and actually sweep you away. But for the moment it remains a little too safe and tame - with performances which range from the over emphatic to the overly bland.
· Until Saturday, then touring. Box office: 0870 060 6651.
