★★☆☆☆ Translating the inner to the outer is the challenge facing many an adapter of novels for the stage. Some things skip from page to stage whilst others have to be dragged, bullied and injected with various performance enhancing concoctions. The present offering at the Theatre Royal, however, seems to have developed a resistance to any such persuasions.

★★★★☆ This is one of those shows, based on a familiar and popular story that will hopefully do a great service in developing a taste for theatre in a young audience. To that end the creative team have done a great job in lifting a story from the page and making it into a theatrical experience that many may well look back on as a seminal visit to a live performance.

★★★☆☆ Anne Reid as the accidental activist has the last word, delivered as a speech direct to the audience, casting doubt over the familiar pro-fracking nostrums and having by now fully un-retired herself from public life. Fracked!, directed by Richard Wilson, is on tour from the Chichester Festival Theatre. It is easily digestible stuff, which last night provided plenty of laughs to keep the Theatre Royal audience chuckling along.