Theatre review: Cranford

This year's fluffy Christmas show at the Orange Tree opens with a young man (Robert Merriam) putting on a dress, being caught and beaten for it until he disappears, never to be seen again; the next couple of hours take in banks profiting from other people's money before collapsing and leaving the ordinary customers penniless, and speeches about how the poor deserve help, but only if they conform to the very specific moral values decided by the people who hold the purse strings. Who knew Elizabeth Gaskell was writing about 2026? In Lin Coghlan & Shaun McKenna's adaptation of the 1853 novel Cranford, Eliza (Phoebe Pryce) visits the titular small town outside Manchester to convalescence for a few months with some distant relatives. The town is known as the home of "Amazons," as men have a habit of dying or wandering off, leaving it full of single or widowed ladies who fill their days keeping up terribly proper social commitments.At the centre of the story is Miss Matty (Tamsin Greig,)…

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