REVIEW: Little Women, York Theatre Royal, until October 12

SEPTEMBER 30 marks the 156th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Louise May Alcott’s Little Women books. She wrote it in only ten weeks, a speed matched by the flashing hand of Freya Parks’s restless Jo March, beret in place as ever when at work, in Theatre Royal creative director Juliet Forster’s free-flowing production.

Alcott’s coming-of-age tale of the March sisters growing up in well-to-do New England during the American Civil War is deemed a “timeless classic” (to quote the Theatre Royal brochure), as popular now as when first published.

Yet the British stage has tended to stage adaptations of Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and Mary Shelley novels rather than Alcott. Looking back through The York Press archives, your reviewer cannot find any past productions in York, the closest being a Lip Service parody, Very Little Women, that toured the Theatre Royal in October 2004.

“I can't remember ever reading Little Women as a child, but Sue [Ryding] did, and she wept buckets,” said her late partner in spoofery, Maggie Fox. “She said we must do it some time, so I had to read it, and she was absolutely right: we just had to do it. It's so sanctimonious, so twee...just awful...and they're Americans."

Hold your high horses. Maggie went on to say the satire was applied with “affection, and also respect for Alcott. She was one of the first woman writers to write about her own life and she was able to make a living out of writing. She was incredibly successful in her own lifetime."

Anne-Marie Casey brings a similarly affectionate tone to her adaptation of the story of sensible Meg (Ainy Medina), tomboy and would-be novelist Jo (Freya Parks, from the 2024 BBC series This Town), vain, silly Amy (Helen Chong) and consumptive, piano-playing Beth (York actress Laura Soper, in her first Theatre Royal appearance since her professional debut in Swallows & Amazons in 2019).

Sanctimonious? Twee? Just awful? No, no, and thrice no. Very American, yes, but Casey does not stir even a spoonful of sugar into her account of the siblings’ journey from childhood to adulthood in the mid-19th century.

Instead, she combines humour with sadness, candour with kindness, storytelling with travelogue, all the while addressing the matter of a women’s role in society, amid the fractious relationships, the pursuit of love, the absence of the father on chaplaincy duty in the war and the need for matriarch Marmee (York actress Kate Hampson) to be a single mother in such stressful circumstances.

Against the backdrop of a divided America’s November 2024 presidential clash coming down to a regressive man versus a progressive woman, with polar opposite views on such matters as abortion, resonance is not hard to find in Little Women.

Albeit that marriage is still the end-all, although not the be-all for Jo, who symbolically takes the lead when dancing, a habit forged in dancing with her sisters but also testament to her determination to do her own thing. Best summed up in burning the back of her dress when standing too close to the fire.

Parks is the stand-out here, a fiery talent fast on the rise (she heads off to her next filming engagement as soon as Little Women ends). The last time your reviewer saw an actor on the York stage destined for the heights was when Sally Hawkins, fresh from drama school, played Juliet in Romeo And Juliet. Parks’s Jo is full of humour, vigour, pathos, impetuous urges, artistic intellect and resolute ambition. Love too.

Medina, Chong and especially Soper more than play their part too, and there is a theatrical grace to the ailing Beth’s scene with Jo, culminating in an exit in white for Beth that symbolises the passing into death: a moment that film could not do so elegiacally or indeed so sparingly.

Hampson’s Marmee is firm but as fair as her hair, always urging her daughters to maximise their talents, whether for music, dress-making, art or writing, equal in her love and counsel for each, but away from their gaze, sadness at her husband being away permeates the glowing surface.

A scene stealer emerges in Caroline Gruber’s match-making Aunt March, the Lady Bracknell of the piece with her waspish tongue, snobbery and insistent interventions.

And what of the men? Nikhil Singh Rai’s Theodore 'Laurie' Laurence is the handsome, elegant, well-mannered, fun-loving prankster and foil for Jo, with the devilish player streak below that smart, engaging, enquiring posh-boy, privileged surface. Hard to resist, like a matinee idol, you might say. Later, such a type would be found in a Tennessee Williams play.

Jack Ashton reveals the importance of being earnest in not one but two roles as men with academic minds, serious intentions and not much income: firstly John Brooke, Meg’s devoted tutor; then the Teutonic professor, Bhaer, who could have been borrowed from a Chekhov or Ibsen play.

Forster’s direction brings out the nuances in all these performances, never over-stating anything, but letting the power of storytelling take grip, whether in the first act, where the action is concentrated in the March house, save for a skating accident depicted with clever use of lighting by Jane Lalljee, or the second, where Amy goes travelling in Europe and Jo heads to New York to begin penning her sensationalist stories.

Ruari Murchison’s set design, first used in Pitlochry Theatre Festival's production, is first class too, making expressive use of curtains, wooden furniture and in particular silver birch tree trunks, sometimes used for hanging a coat to convey a transition from outdoors to indoors. Her costumes delight too, as do Erin Carter’s movement direction and the sisters’ singing in harmony by the piano.

Freya Parks. Remember that name. A tall woman amid Little Women, making a big impact, with a stellar career ahead.

Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.