Their brother, Thomas, seems strikingly unfazed as he beavers away at his perpetual homework while James Mortmain himself holes up in the gate tower, exerting a presence that is, by turns, withering, pathetic and absurd. His eldest daughter, 20-year-old Rose, is furious that her youth is being wasted in picturesque poverty while his younger, Cassandra, in her matter of fact tones, tries to make the best of things (“my clothes don’t bear thinking about, so I just don’t think about them”). Then touring to Octagon, Bolton, and Oxford Playhouse.Like the castle, the family is ruined - head of the household, James Mortmain, is an influential author whose inability to write a second novel has left his children, and second wife near starvation. Including me.Īt Watford Palace until 22 April. For all its flaws, this old-fashioned show is full of integrity and will bring pleasure to thousands who love the novel. Most noticeably on Cassandra’s birthday, when Stephen’s hard-worked for present is overlooked in favour of one from wealthy Simon.

Yet there were moments when the production made me well up. There were times when I was irresistibly reminded of the Twitter account, book and TV show Very British Problems. I can’t help wondering if this show might have missed its moment as a stage adaptation, particularly as its bohemian middle-class sensibility and absurd romantic flamboyance is magnified in the theatre in a way that doesn’t happen on the page: its characters seem a mite irritating, and the scenario quaint. Ben Watson’s father doesn’t quite have the right comic tone, and Kate Batter has a thankless task as Rose, whose desperation turns to gold-digging and back to desperation again. There is such a lot to like here, from Ti Green’s brilliant design, in which the crumbling castle for which the Mortmains cannot raise the rent, is constructed out of chairs and ladders like a gothic Ikea, to Shona Morris’s movement, which comes into its own during Cassandra’s desperate journey to London.Īspects still need work: the rich American brothers Neil (Luke Dale) and Simon (Theo Boyce), the latter the heir to the local hall and the man at whom Rose sets her cap, are dull as ditchwater.

Luke Dale, Shona White and Julia St John in I Capture the Castle at Watford Palace theatre, then on tour.

I capture the castle by dodie smith