Perth theatre, Scotland
Nicola Werenowska’s enterprising adaptation tackles DH Lawrence’s novel back to front

Adapting a novel is rarely straightforward and playwright Nicola Werenowska takes a particularly enterprising stab at it in her version of the DH Lawrence classic. Where this multigenerational novel luxuriates in lengthy interior monologues, full of poetic meditations, sexual longing and self-questioning, Werenowska pulls the focus sharply on its three central women and their passage towards modernity.

Her prime interest is in Ursula (Rebecca Brudner), the early 20th-century girl who takes strides towards the kind of independence longed for by her mother Anna (Jessica Dennis) and impossible to imagine for her grandmother Lydia (Kate Spiro), a Polish immigrant who stepped down the social ladder to settle in rural Nottinghamshire.