Tess of the D’Urbevilles is a well-worn story, familiar from school, films and adaptations, but Ockham’s Razor and Turtle Key Arts twist out a fresh shape, with Tess split into two: Tess the narrator, caught in soft bitterness and exquisite nostalgia, standing aside from the action, detached, observer and commentator; and a vehemently, magnificently physically present actor demonstrating and experiencing the sorrows and joys of Tess’s story. This splitting and commentary renders the familiar shocking and new, illuminating and creating new commentary on the familiar sad round of Tess’s tale; while a chorus of country wenches and expert on-stage bare wood construction create the society and scenery of the desperate, bleak, claustrophobic countryside.

The Wessex landscape is a foreboding onstage presence, communicated by Daniel Denton’s atmospheric projections of gloomy hills and valleys and exhausting slogs across shifting sloped wooden planks, in turn gangplanks, supports, hills, homes and (eventually) gallows. Anna Crichlow, as Tess’s voice, brings a tough, upright power to the woman caught by circumstance and rough luck; Lila Naruse is dizzying and dazzling as Tess’sphysical presence, spinning through joy and despair with astonishing elegance and poise. Lauren Jamieson, Victoria Skillen and Leah Wallings balance wildness and compassion, expressive and vivid physicality as they spin through roles, faithful friends and kind to Tess; roaring drunks and saucy milkmaids; witnesses and friends. The male roles are provided by Nat Whittingham as Angel, who vividly and vehemently inhabits the role in all its difficulty and complexity, and Joshua Frazer as Alec D’Urberville, oozing aristocratic charm and delicate, hapless menace.

This is a compassionate, dazzling, curious and (above all) kind adaptation of one of the most heart-breaking novels of all time. Narrator Tess talks us gently through the familiar tragedy; physical Tess brings feelings in turn joyous, hopeful, horrified, tortuous and magnificent.