A DARING re-imagining of Charlotte Brontë’s ground-breaking last novel Villette is being staged in Leeds.

The play, written by Linda Marshall Griffiths, opens at the West Yorkshire Playhouse on Saturday, September 24 and runs until October 15.

Villette is the centrepiece of the Playhouse’s Brontë which offers contemporary responses to the Brontë sisters across performance, dance and music.

The new play is said to remain true to Charlotte’s into longing and loneliness while exploring the kind of woman its central character Lucy might be today and in the future.

A Playhouse spokesman said many people considered Villette to be better, more ambitious and complex than Charlotte’s more famous novel Jane Eyre.

Linda Marshall Griffiths has approached’ novel from a 21st century perspective, focusing on around Lucy Snowe, a brilliant virologist who could play a crucial role in finding a cure for a pandemic virus but is plagued by her a past which torments her at every turn.

As the urgency and burden of her work grow greater, she grapples with the promise and possibility of love and the fear of losing it.

Director Mark Rosenblatt said: ‘This re-imagining of Villette gets to the heart of the original novel but finds a way to connect it with a modern audience.

“It relocates and updates the action to a near-future world, placing Lucy in a position of isolation and distance as the last survivor of her kind - as Charlotte Bronte was the last of her siblings when she wrote Villette.”

The Brontë Season includes a work-in-progress performance of Wasted (October 20-22), a new musical drama about the Brontës; Tiny Shoes, an audio drama available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum and online; readings Brontë letters; panel discussion; and the digital project Know Your Place featuring stories of defiance.

Visit wyp.org.uk or call 0113 2137700 to book tickets.