Anne of Green Gables

Synopsis

As soon as Anne Shirley arrives at Green Gables she wants to stay forever - but will the Cuthberts send her back to the orphanage? They had clearly requested a boy, not a skinny girl with decidedly red hair and a tempter to match! However, her singular personality soon wakes up the inhabitants of sleepy Avonlea and in no time she's the talk of the town.

Our Review:

1 December 2004

In Anne of Green Gables, everything depends on the casting of Anne, the red-headed orphan with an imagination that gets her into trouble in the conservative community of Avonlea. Luckily, Novel Theatre has found a completely credible heroine in Ruth Gibson.

Gibson’s Anne is furiously sensitive about her copper hair, wildly melodramatic and vividly poetic, but, if by the interval she has got into more than enough jolly scrapes, Gibson never lets the character slip, never nudges the audience into laughter. Anne inadvertently introduces her best friend to strong liquor, has to apologise for rudeness (throwing herself on her knees in storybook fashion) and whacks the handsomest boy in school on the head with a slate when he calls her “carrot”.

Novel Theatre specialises in adaptation. Emma Reeves has also written a version of Little Women now running at the West End’s Duchess Theatre, which is, to my mind, far less successful. ...

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