Kate Hamill’s award-winning stage adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which opened last night at Scarborough’s SJT, stands apart from the plethora of period dramas on television based on Jane Austen’s works, the star-studded films, the faithful theatrical transcriptions. This being the 250th anniversary of one of English literature’s greatest and most beloved figures, we are getting a good deal of her at the moment but nothing perhaps quite as wittily original as this, or more invigorating and engaging.

Last year Miss Hamill was America’s ‘most produced playwright’, having first come to prominence in 2017 for her adaptation of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, which won her the honour of being the Wall Street Journal’s Playwright of the Year. The American off-Broadway audiences clearly love her zesty adaptations of a whole range of female-centred classics but how would she go down in this country, where surprisingly she remains little known. Scarborough’s answer came in the resounding cheers at the end as the members of the audience, old and young, took to their feet to applaud, long and loud.

Mind you this version might have been written for the joyous intimacies of this theatre’s round - and must have been a joy to direct for Lotte Wakeham, working her magic on its UK premiere production at the Bolton Octagon last month - which received rave reviews, incidentally. Her programme notes speak of the ‘huge fun’ in rehearsals, ‘irreverence’ and inspiration being taken from ‘romcoms and other adaptations’.

Though done in Regency costume and with some sensitive choreography of the dance movements of the time, the dialogue is sharp, and accessible to the modern audience, even though mercifully without glaring anachronism. The keynote is humour, specifically that of lampooning social snobbery, and no one on stage escapes with feathers unruffled or pride unchecked.The four main characters in particular go through a bewildering arc of experience, leaving them both chastened and uplifted at the end.

Rosa Hesmondhalgh is note-perfect as Lizzie, the eldest, wittiest and most perceptive of the four Bennet sisters (a fifth has been dispensed with in this adaptation), who vows not to marry, or at least not simply for financial security. She flatly refuses the proposal of her cousin, the odious Reverend Collins, even though such a match would allow the family to keep their estate.

That her mother should think the rejection of such a man - whose cringeworthy toadying, off the Richter magnitude scale in self-abasing pomposity, inspires the mother of all comic turns from Ben Fensome - is a tragedy of epic proportions tells us everything about society of the time.

When we have finished splitting our sides, too, at Joanna Holden’s delightful send up of the woebegone Mrs. Bennet, we should of course remember the very real plight of the unmarried woman, totally reliant on catching the eye and favour of a male relative such as this, in the patriarchal, class-ridden society of the time when ’ladies’ had no means of earning their own living. Lizzie’s ‘plain’ but pragmatic friend, Caroline (Kiara Nicole Pillai) might be less obviously revolted by a marriage of convenience and economic security.

Fortunately, Lizzie inherits more of her father’s detachment than her mother’s derangement. Dyfrig Morris is the long-suffering Mr. Bennet, better described as patience behind a newspaper than on a monument, a silent and stoic sufferer in a house where marital intrigue is the only important topic of conversation.

Less obviously right is Lizzie’s summary rejection of one of the most eligible men in England. We might see what she cannot, that Mr. Darcy is rather more gauche, restrained and self-possessed than offensively superior - and may be as much a victim as a product of his aristocratic upbringing. We get an unsavoury reek of his background in the form of Lady Catherine De Bourgh (Jessica Ellis), the dominating dowager who seeks to control her nephew’s impulses and marry him to her own daughter. Wilde’s Lady Bracknell is living proof of the indomitable presence of such types.

Darcy’s unexpected proposal to Lizzie, seemingly blurted out against his better judgement, is a case study in what not to say in asking for a lady’s hand - but in his favour it reveals a man battling to free his heart from the constraints and prejudices he’s been raised to accept.

Can it really be thirty years, by the way, since Andrew Davies’s BBC adaptation, starring Colin Firth, held the country spellbound over a six-week period, waiting to know if he would or would not overcome his prejudice, swallow his pride and follow his heart. James Sheldon’s ruggedly handsome Darcy is cut from the same fine cloth. He does passive inscrutability and principled perturbation rather well and proves Darcy a romantic in spite of himself.

Lizzie’s younger and prettier sister, as Austen is always at pains to tell us, is Jane. Aamira Challenger has everything it takes to play the English rose, the fragrant variety without thorns, ripe for plucking. It appears to be love at first sight when she and the amiable Mr. Bingley (Eve Pereira) find themselves in close proximity. If it seems too good to be true, so it is. Again the impediment is to be found embedded in upper class reluctance to admit a commoner thread to its social fabric .

Speaking of threads, it seems a decent bet that Mary, bookish, moralistic and heavy handed on the spinet, is most likely to remain a spinster, whilst no one would put money on the flighty 14-year old (Jessica Ellis ) being the first sister to marry. But she might not see it that way when the soldiers are in town and one handsome lieutenant, Mr. Wickham (Ben Fensome), is a frequent visitor while the punch is flowing freely.

The storylines, including Wickham’s scandalous triflings and unspeakable lack of honour, are probably well known to readers, anyway, so suffice it to say, there are many twists and turns, rather more of the comic kind than the genuinely suspenseful, on the way. It’s not so much the narrative arc that takes our fancy as the incidentals encountered on the way, the protocols to be overcome, the accommodations made, the pridefulness put in its place in order that love can find its way and triumph over those unfortunate materialities that so often in the real world stand in the way.

The nine-strong ensemble, directed with real pace and brio, by Wakeham, delight to showcase their flair and timing in a play that contains so much richly comic material, with elements of farce, spoof, parody, slapstick, lampoon, farce … you name it! And yet … and yet … we had a very moist ending. Not a few tears might have been shed when the most powerful and enduring theme in romantic fiction resolved itself to our satisfaction.

The audience did indeed love it. The whole production was just up their street, the right beat for them, pushing their buttons, channeling their icons and cultural reference points. The vibe was contemporary if the material was historical. And all this was done with a degree of subtlety beneath the laugh-out-loud surface.

I’m not exactly sure that many of the younger members of the audience were even aware of one nicely contrived anachronism - the music - so deeply embedded in the soundtrack of their age are they. What a touch of genius, presumably from Sonum Batra, composer and musical director, to sonorously insinuate elegant string quartet snatches of such as Don’t You Want Me Baby, There She Goes and Why Does it Always Rain on Me?, at appropriate moments.

By the time the romantic ending was culminating in a kiss, Lizzie aloft in Darcy’s strong arms, to the accompaniment of Elton John’s Your Song, the two were making it their song and sending the audience into an ecstasy of applause. You would have had to have a heart of stone not to get caught up in the emotion.

Don’t miss this under any circumstances. I think this critic might want to see it again before the month is out.

Pride & Prejudice is at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, until 26th July