York Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden was so impressed by Tim Luscombe's repertory production of Amadeus last July that he invited him to direct the play of his choice this season.

Luscombe picked Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's tale of Catherine, a young woman with an overactive imagination and a zest for life amid the sophisticated society of Bath. Here he explains his choice to Charles Hutchinson.

Let's go straight to the heart of the matter, Tim, why pick Northanger Abbey?

"Northanger Abbey is a wonderful book and a great story by Jane Austen, full of characters that have real rollicking emotional journeys and come out at the end changed, having grown through their experiences. It's a very theatrical piece, probably the most theatrical of Jane Austen's novels and that's what intrigued me about it and made me want to find a way to stage it. It's not hard: it's the most stage-worthy off all of her works."

Had any other works come under consideration?

"When Damian said 'Suggest something', I did suggest Emma at first but we discovered a company had come through York with a production of Emma a couple of years ago. But I think Northanger Abbey is a better choice because the story is such high melodrama with a gothic element to it that is innately theatrical."

What were the challenges for you in adapting a novel for the stage?

"Adaptations are not something that I've done a great deal of. I have written original pieces but this is only my second adaptation and the first one was early in my career when I adapted Noel Coward's only novel, Pomp And Circumstance, a fairly colonial piece from the late 1950s when he was growing more right wing. I didn't know I had to get permission to do it until I had finished it, and unfortunately his estate refused me permission, but I would still like to do it some time."

Thankfully, there were no such ownership problems this time. Northanger Abbey was an open road; what journey have you taken to transport it from page to stage?

"What I wanted to avoid, firstly, was the trap of having a narrator, a device where you never leave the book behind. Secondly, I wanted to dramatise Catherine's thoughts. Being of her social class and a woman, she was not allowed to ask a man to dance or express her thoughts in public, so the only time she could express her thoughts was alone at night."

How have you addressed the potential problem of narrative overload?

"In Austen's novel, Catherine is obsessed with Ann Radcliffe's book, The Mysteries Of Udolpho, so what we have done is introduce five-second snaps of absurd melodramatic horror from that book to show when she is frightened by a man or turned off by him.

"That convention is not unusual in television dramas or in films, and we can use the music composer and lighting designer in theatre to make equally strong gestures, rather like using inverted commas or a speech bubble.

"What we have to do is establish Catherine's flaw of seeing the world through a book, and that is a flaw she must overcome."

Does Catherine's flaw have modern parallels?

"Yes, her problem is not confined to the late 18th century. Today, young people in particular don't feel glamorous enough when they see pictures in Heat magazine or GQ. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine learns she can't judge people through a book, and that remains a universal problem, so I didn't want the story to be seen as dated or quaint. Instead I want the audience to be with her on her journey."

How difficult was it to take an executioner's sharp edge to Austen's text?

"That was interesting. I really fell in love with the way she writes and was loath to cut her words. I had already cut my script twice before rehearsals but as soon as you work with actors your stage instincts come into play and you cut repetitive lines. You create something that is immediately more exciting.

"For the first days in the rehearsal room I still had my writer's head on but my director's head took over, and he is a good editor! So whereas a lot of TV or film versions of Austen revel in the period detail, which can be soporific, we have the immediacy of theatre."

Is the role of writer-director your ideal theatrical marriage?

"A good year for me is 50 per cent writing and 50 per cent director, so the ideal job for me is writer-director, because writing is the creative job and directing is interpretative. It's more fun being in control of all the production... being a control freak!"

Northanger Abbey, York Theatre Royal, May 24 to June 12. Tickets: £6.50 to £17, students and under 25s £3.50, on 01904 623568.

Updated: 09:07 Friday, May 14, 2004