REVIEW: LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER

SALISBURY PLAYHOUSE

DH Lawrence’s famously infamous novel was written in 1928 and banned in Britain for the next 30 years.

It was finally published in 1960 after a notorious obscenity trial, and now the stage version enjoys this world premiere co-production by Sheffield Theatres and English Touring Theatre.

Clifford Chatterley has returned home from the First World War paralysed and unable to produce the child that he and his young wife long for.

His wife Constance desperately desires love, passion and tenderness, seeking what she’s missing through an Irish playwright and later through her husband’s game-keeper Mellors.

Lawrence’s working title for Lady Chatterley’s Lover was in fact Tenderness – in retrospect a much stronger, less controversial title. Even Chatterley eventually achieves a kind of love from his tenderly supportive house-keeper Mrs Bolton.

Adapting a classic novel into a stage play can be problematic, but director Phillip Breen achieves pacy storytelling through episodic short scenes, conveys the grimy industrial Midlands though Nottinghamshire dialect, and explores the class struggle through trade union protests and violent police reaction.

Nine marvellous actors deliver 16 fascinating characters; particularly outstanding are Jonah Russell as roughly tender lover Oliver Mellors, Hedydd Dylan as romantically sensuous Constance Chatterley, and Eugene O’Hare as arrogantly superior yet feebly damaged Chatterley.

The stage sets and atmospheric lighting caress the nude scenes with falling rain, colourful flowers and birdsong, counterpointed by the physical violence.

Runs until Saturday.

Brendan McCusker