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Northanger Abbey review: This slow-motion muddle fails to immerse, writes PATRICK MARMION

REVIEW: Jane Austen died in 1817, just before her novel Northanger Abbey was published. She may be forgiven for dying all over again, thanks to this stage adaptation.

Instead, the first 45 minutes of her script (and Tessa Walker's two-and-a-half hour production) are taken up with a caricatured representation of Cath's tomboy childhood in… Yorkshire (moved there from Wiltshire, perhaps to suit audiences during the northern leg of the tour). Translated from the French by director Nicolas Kent and performed with cello music played by Gemma Rosefield, The Most Precious Of Goods is the story of an old woodcutter's wife who rescues a starving baby after it is flung by its desperate father into the snow . The part of the vengeful vamp, snorting cocaine from her crucifix (played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sarah Michelle Gellar in the movie) is superbly claimed by a slinky, swanking Rhianne-Louise McCaulsky, belting every note of Genie In A Bottle.

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