A Room With a View is fun … but we’re told too much instead of being allowed to work it out

Knowing if you’ve fallen in lust is straightforward; knowing if you’ve fallen in love, more elusive. In E. M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View, Lucy Honeychurch is even confused by lust, so has little chance with love – at least not without wise counsel. But then, she lives in starched Edwardian England, where pretence and hypocrisy rule, and therefore, as the Reverend Mr Beebe says, “It can be so difficult to understand people who speak the truth.”

Grace Chapple’s new stage adaptation, directed by Hannah Goodwin, is a brave undertaking. In 1985, Merchant Ivory threw a galaxy of stars at their film version, and even the peerless Daniel Day-Lewis struggled as Cecil, the man with whom Lucy thinks she’s fallen in love.

Forster’s prose and view of humanity share an airiness, and his characters are cheapened by excessive caricature. Underscoring his work is a benevolence best encapsulated by Mr Emerson, a humanist and socialist who believes in maximising life’s potential.