A FAVOURITE saying of my father, when he had just driven a nice new, but underpowered car was “Lovely bodywork and interior, but couldn’t pull your cap off your head”. It is nowhere as drastic as that, but in many ways, under Loveday Ingram’s carefully structured direction, Ann-Marie Casey’s stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1868 novel fits that description.

In paring the more than 700 pages of the novel down to a two and a half hour play – including the interval – the adapter has had to ditch many of the book’s characters, telling the story of the four March girls, from teenage to womanhood, via nine characters played by eight actors.

With those omissions has gone some of the drama and exuberance which placed the novel at the forefront of thinking and foreseeing female emancipation when it was first published. In their place we concentrate more on the personal stories, dramas and crises that mould the lives of the March girls as they grow from school girls to adults.

However there is no question that Anne-Marie Casey has designed a beautiful “car”, and that the combination of Ruari Murchison’s cleverly designed, constantly moving set and composer Mathew Bugg’s sympathetic mixing of American Civil War songs with hymns, fixes the story perfectly in Massachusetts in the later part of the 19th century.

There is some beautifully crafted characterisation of the four March sisters – Natalie Dunne moving from schoolgirl exuberance to thoughtful author as Jo, the leader of the pack, Jade Oswald’s more traditionally moulded elder sister Meg, Jewelle Hutcheson’s selfish, but loveable, Amy, for whom the cards always drop just right, and the gentle underplaying of the tragic Beth by Megan Richards.

Tom Richardson moves with ease from the diffident John Brooke to the fiery philosopher Professor Bhaer, and apart from an irritating habit of appearing time after time without a jacket for no good reason, Perry Williams cut the right dashing figure as the Marches’ rich neighbour and prospective husband Laurie.

If some of that group of young actors found themselves a little inhibited by the surroundings of Bath Theatre Royal the same could not be said of the experienced Juliet Aubrey, displaying the physical and mental fatigue of someone short on funds and help, as the March girls’ mother Marmee, and Balinda Lang, sadly underused as the girls’ rich, sharp-tongued Aunt March.

If the drector and cast inject a little more power into this charming adaptation of a much loved classic story then a pleasant evening at the theatre will immediately turn into a memorable one.

Photographs by Nobby Clark