Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey

With just two actors, seven puppets and a box of props, Box Tale Soup has cleverly reduced a Jane Austen novel to an hour-long play in this beautiful and imaginative production. The two actors played the leads expressively, while at the same time making the paper puppets into believable characters in their own right, swapping the puppets back and forwards between them, and incredibly even switching the voices from the man to the woman while still maintaining the characters. The props were well thought out, with a fabric theme of the printed word that harked back to the novel, and each family group marked out by different coloured handkerchiefs. A brilliant adaptation that brings out all the humour of the novel and a joy to watch.

Upstairs at Three and Ten, 11 May 2013

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