The stage adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet is earning many positive reviews from critics.

The new play has been adapted by playwright Laura Wade, who has teamed up again with director Lyndsey Turner, who she worked with on her play Posh.

The Guardian gave the show a three-star review, saying

Wade ingeniously frames the story by presenting it through the eyes of a gavel-wielding Victorian music-hall chairman of the kind made familiar by TV’s The Good Old Days. This pays off beautifully in the first half, which is a hymn to theatre,” At the opening night on Monday, Wade told the BBC: “There’s so much theatre already in the book, it was about finding that and drawing it out and because of the Victorian age of this theatre, it just seemed like a perfect match.”

The Stage said

It takes the history and traditions of music hall and mashes them together with something altogether more modern. Music, comedy, circus and illusion are all thrown into the mix,” the review read.

Master of Ceremonies David Cardy narrates the story of Nancy, an oyster girl from Whitstable who falls hard and deep for Kitty, a male impersonator and music hall star, before taking to the boards and becoming a star herself. The songs they perform are not music hall numbers, but rather more recent: Prince and the Pet Shop Boys, a little bit of Miley Cyrus, a dash of Bonnie Tyler.”

The TV version – which starred Rachael Stirling as Nan and Keeley Hawes as cross-dressing stage star Kitty – was famed for its steamy sex scenes.

The stage adaptation instead represents the passionate sexual acts with astonishing aerial stunt work reminiscent of Cirque Du Soleil.

Playwright Laura Wade explained

We wanted to create something on stage that showed how those sexual encounters really felt and the different emotional character of them, to convey that emotional pull to the audience. Sex is always rather difficult to do on stage because you can’t have close ups in the same way that you can on film so you have to find a different way of telling that story.”

The cast was led by newcomer Sally Messham, who plays Nan, added

This is my first professional theatre job, straight in at the deep end. I picked up the book as soon as I got the role and I loved it, it’s like a Dickensian novel, you get a lot of Victorian novels about gay men and very few about lesbians and what Laura and Sarah have done is to give them a rich history.”

It is still rare to see women’s sexuality portrayed with such frankness on stage, something Waters herself has noted.

Talking to the BBC on opening night, Water’s said

I do go to the theatre a lot but it’s only when you see a stage with a lot of women on it, telling a young woman’s story that you realise how rarely you do see that. So it has been really refreshing for me to see Laura’s fantastic script. It’s also lovely to know the book still has a currency, still appeals to people. Since I wrote it 20 years ago, a lot has changed since then.”

 Tipping the Velvet will run at the Lyric Hammersmith until 24 October, before moving to the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from 28 October – 14 November.

Tipping The Velvet is one of the most iconic and most well-known pieces of queer media out there.

Set in 1887 in Victorian England, the debut novel by Sarah Waters shows the life of a young woman named Nancy “Nan” Astley as she falls in love with a ‘male impersonator’ named Kitty Butler. Nan follows Kitty to London for hijinks and adventures as the two women get by.

Compared to the works of Charles Dickens, Tipping The Velvet was praised for the way that it explored what it would have been like to be a same-sex couple in Victorian England (Waters was writing her PhD dissertation on gay and lesbian historical fiction at the time) and for the way it looked at themes of gender, sexism and classism, issues which would have been prevalent during their era.

The novel also broke ground when it was adapted into a BBC series in 2002, with Waters having been surprised that the BBC chose to adapt the book due to sexual content within it.

Following that three-part series (which was also praised, despite initial outrage from some) and a stage adaptation in 2009, Tipping The Velvet will once again be presented to audiences, this time at the Lyric Hammersmith (London) starting in September.

This particular stage adaptation has been written Laura Wade and directed by Lyndsey Turner. Having been in the works for four years, it reportedly stays true to the book, with Sarah Waters having worked closely with Wade on the script.

Previous fans of the book (or the TV show) should feel that Sally Messham (as Nancy) and Laura Rogers (as Kitty) stick closely to the original, then, and audiences shouldn’t expect any Twilight ‘spider monkey’ type of diversions from the original work.

Also good news is that Tipping The Velvet‘s artistic director Sean Holmes also realises the significance of the show, telling The Guardian that “what’s so brilliant about the novel is it is such an upfront, unapologetic celebration of sexuality that just happens to be between two women.

Obviously it’s set at a time when that’s frowned upon but it’s also just really about the journey to love and sexual discovery and the massive, formative journey that applies to everyone, whatever your sexuality is, and yet you never see portrayed between gay women.”

Tipping The Velvet will run from September 18 to October 24 at the Lyric Hammersmith. After the Lyric Hammersmith, Tipping The Velvet will be on at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh.