SMALL-SCALE touring companies unfairly took the brunt of the hammer blows in the Arts Council funding review, yet another loss to the rural communities already shedding post offices, buses, pubs and shops.

The not-for-profit Green Hammerton company Badapple Theatre did not face the axe, and by keeping its production costs to the minimum, it can maintain its mission to bring theatre to your doorstep, with its diary busy through to the spring 2012 premiere of Eddie And The Gold Tops.

First staged in 2005, The James Herriot Story has been revived this spring by writer-director Kate Bramley for a tour of Herriot country and beyond, playing village halls, civic centres, school halls, arts centres, even a Malton hotel.

I caught one of two evening performances in Markington, a village between Harrogate and Ripon with long-established farming families – exactly the hardy breed of rural folk that Alf Wight/James Herriot portrayed so evocatively in his books.

Performed by Jonny McPherson, Bramley’s one-man show is set in the Drovers Arms – the name it coincidentally shares with the derelict pub at the Markington/Bishop Thornton crossroads – in wartime Darrowby, where the new vet, young, callow Scotsman James Herriot, has just arrived from Glasgow.

The piece is narrated not by Herriot but barman Tom, a convivial host who asks the audience questions to break the ice. Over two halves, McPherson takes on the guises of assorted farmers, as well as Herriot (in a vet’s coat) and the Farnham brothers, Siegfried and Tristan, in tales of country ways. Herriot’s love for Helen starts to blossom too.

It is gentle, humorous entertainment, played in a gentlemanly, old-fashioned way by McPherson, who is skilled at accents and quickly drawn characterisation.

Theatrically, the show might have better suited a trimmer 75 minutes straight through, but the good folk of Markington reckoned it was better value at 90 minutes with an interval cuppa.

The James Herriot Story, An Honorary Yorkshireman, Badapple Theatre, on tour until May 29. See badappletheatre.com for dates and ticket details.