When Liberty opened at the Globe in August, there were groans that the three-hour French Revolution epic was in need of some serious pruning.

Two months on it has reached Chichester and shed nearly 40 minutes. So, either the cast enrolled on a quick course at the Vikki Pollard school of speech or there’s been some serious tweaking.

“When it opened at the Globe and it was a work in progress,” explains actress Belinda Lang. “It’s a new play and you discover very quickly where the lulls are – so it was cut. The difficult thing when it’s too long is not to just mark through it with a black pen and throw the baby out with the bath water.”

The play is now a “normal” two hours 20 minutes and, according to the reviews, all the better for it.

Set in Paris, 1793, Liberty is an adaptation of Anatole France’s 1912 novel Les Dieux Ont Soif, which explores how the French Revolution affects the lives of six friends.

Lang is worried it all sounds a little heavy and that the words French and Revolution coupled with the fact the play is written in verse by a poet – Glyn Maxwell – could put less hardened theatre-goers off.

She’s also concerned about the poster – a woman’s naked and bloody torso painted with the French tricolore. It’s beautiful but not representative, she insists.

“It’s a frustrating one to tour. It’s a big costume production from the Globe and I think it’s perceived as slightly too serious or challenging by people. Even the poster is challenging.

“In fact, it’s a story about six people and happens to be set at the time of the French Revolution. It’s not a polemic. It really describes how individuals respond to a given situation and what that brings out in their characters. It’s also about the normal things in life – romance, fun… oh, and beautiful costumes.”

Lang, who plays Louise – an aristocrat who renounces her upper class roots in exchange for her life – is particularly taken with the costumes.

“It’s not all blood and guillotines. It’s a beautiful period clothes-wise but it can take a fair old while to get dressed,” she admits. “It can also be very uncomfortable if you eat. You have to be careful.”

Despite doing endless theatre work, Lang is still probably best-known as the mother from the long-running TV series, 2.4 Children. Although the series ended more than eight years ago, she still gets recognised. “It always used to happen in supermarkets,” she laughs. “Places where I looked like my character – harrassed!”

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