Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge is a melancholy tale of folly, pride and misplaced loyalties. Having sold his wife and daughter to a stranger in a fit of pique, the central character, Michael Henchard, goes on to make his fortune as a grain merchant, becomes a pillar of the Casterbridge community and eventually the town's mayor.

Eighteen years later, his wife Susan returns with a daughter on the verge of womanhood and Henchard, feeling duty bound to do the decent thing, asks Susan to share his life again as his wife for a second time.

Despite this gesture of belated nobility, Henchard's vanity, paranoia and the stress of trying to maintain the untenable pretence of his secret past combine to ensure his downfall.

Adapted for the stage by Mary Elizabeth Burke-Kennedy and given a subtle, elegant polish by director Alan Stanford, this energetic Storytellers production bristles with unsettling sexual tension, personal enmity, lies, deceit and jealousy. Simon O'Gorman pitches Henchard's decline perfectly, making him a man that is never too easy to like, hate or understand. Hilary Reynolds seizes the fragile poise of his thwarted lover Lucetta with a delicate caress, and Sean Campion is entirely convincing, first as Henchard's loyal friend and servant, later as his rival in both business and matters of the heart. All the cast members are excellent, moving seamlessly from character to chorus and fashioning between them a gloriously rich night at the theatre.