We get some of Anne Elliot’s distinctive personality when she pushes people she disagrees with off the rectangle onto a gym mattress.  Anne Elliot is Jane Austen’s most mature heroine, like Jane herself unmarried but not as ill at ease with spinsterhood as her sister Elizabeth.

While staying at Mary’s home, Anne meets the Musgrove sisters Louisa (Matilda Bailes) and Henrietta (Caroline Moroney) both of whom dance but not in a recreation of Regency dance but more like Pans People with the addition of very silly moves, which had the audience puzzled and really laughing.  It is Mary who comments on the lack of decorum which is very witty when the cast is in 21st century dress.

Moving to Lyme Regis brings cavorting in the sea with so many soap bubbles you might think of sea pollution.  The Musgrove girls are in bikinis and Louisa gets cosy with Frederick Wentworth.  Mr Elliot makes a Baywatch type appearance in bathing trunks.  Louisa throws herself off the cliff to attract Wentworth and ends up staying in Lyme where another suitor appears.  I loved the continual floating down of odd bubbles throughout the second act on unsuspecting actors!

Adam Deary takes on three distinctive roles, Charles Hayter, Henrietta’s suitor in round rimmed spectacles, Captain Benwick with a long haired wig and Mr Elliot in almost nothing!  I saw Sasha Frost in FOLK at Hampstead in January and she has a beautiful singing voice which I was hoping to hear in Persuasion.  Sadly not, but this play gives her an opportunity to show her expressive acting as Anne.  The doubling doesn’t confuse because of sound wig, hat and costume choices.

Jeff James’s production of Persuasion is a lot of fun with maybe the appearance of Lady Dalrymple from RuPaul’s Drag Race as the startling highlight.  It is a good natured adaptation with lively movement and music from Dua Lipa, Robyn and Cardi B.  In April Persuasion  stays at Alexandra Palace and in May, at the Oxford Playhouse the other two producers with the Rose, Kingston.