Mansfield Park is a must-see for lovers of Jane Austen from the country’s last remaining Regency Theatre.

Unceremoniously uprooted from her humble family home, intelligent young Fanny Price is dropped into the bustling, aristocratic household of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, where she finds herself buffeted from one crisis to the next in the company of her cousins and their well-to-do friends. Yet throughout this turmoil one thing remains a constant - her love for the generous, worthy and steadfast Edmund Bertram.

But will this love be her salvation? Or will she be forced to marry the charismatic Henry Crawford for connections and wealth alone? Can Fanny triumph over her adoptive family's demands and follow her heart to acquire the husband and life she so desires and deserves?

The question remains: when I put out churnalism, am I simply expressing my laziness? I am bulking up the blog without having to do too much work, saving my energy for important things, like smoking or shouting at my fellow students.

Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park - brought to vivid life in recent adaptations starring Billie Piper, Frances O’Conner and Johnny Lee Miller - finds a new incarnation in this acclaimed production from the very last Regency-era theatre in the country - The Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds.

Directed by Colin Blumenau, Tim Luscombe’s sharply drawn adaptation of one of Austen’s most challenging novels premièred to critical and popular acclaim last year, and the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds is delighted to be able to bring this spell-binding production to audiences around the country for the second year running, celebrating 200 years since the novel was completed in 1813.

In this case, I actually like the original novel, and feel that it would be nice for the production to circulate around whatever social media my blog can haunt. Mansfield Park is one of Austen's more quirky numbers: the heroine is so lovely, the love story so beautiful. There's none of that moral ambiguity that confused me in Emma.

A Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds Production

MANSFIELD PARK

By Jane Austen King’s Theatre, Edinburgh: Tuesday 5 – Saturday 9 November 2013

‘There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them’

Tim Luscombe has been described as theatre’s ‘Austen champion’, with Mansfield Park being described as a ‘Riveting adaptation… utterly absorbing’; ‘Created with much love, affection and, above all, intelligence.’

Director Colin Blumenau’s unmatched knowledge of Georgian theatre has led the development of the Theatre Royal’s ‘Restoring the Repertoire’ programme, uncovering the smash-hit productions of this glamorous era and returning them to authentic surroundings, in some cases performing them for the first time in nearly two hundred years.

Of course, I have to slip in a cynical comment: does theatre have to rework classics to get an audience? Does the wry wit of Austen transfer to the stage? This beautiful archive I am leaving for future generations, by slapping my press releases on-line, must have a wee sting in the tail. 

Then again, isn't there a worth in Austen's plots, even detached from her prose. I spent a year trying to act like one of her heroes once. Yeah, that worked...