Margaret Catchpole: The Times

The sound of hoofs: an invisible pony gallops round the Cold War hangar on the old Bentwaters airbase and a small, dishevelled girl runs in to summon the doctor to her mistress. Half-admiring, half-scandalised, the doctor hears that the child rode bareback into Ipswich, right through the marketplace. "The boldness of the wild child must be tamed," he says, "for her sake and the sake of society." Above them stands the adult Margaret, condemned to death by an assizes judge, hearing her sentence commuted to transportation.

Margaret Catchpole, a legend in two hemispheres, never was tamed. Alistair Cording's play, based on fact, was first toured in smaller spaces by Ivan Cutting's regional group Eastern Angles and is revived in this grandly weird space to mark the group's 30th birthday.

She is a terrific subject: court reports, contemporary memoirs and her letters from Australia flesh out a life that is classic 18th-century picaresque: born to a dispossessed Suffolk farmer, she fell in love with a sailor and smuggler, worked for the affluent Cobbold brewing family, learnt to read, and one night rode her employer's horse to London to meet her lover - a feat that sparked both admiration and condemnation. She escaped from Ipswich gaol, was caught and transported. She became a free farmer and midwife and died in 1819, having been able to write of her Australian prosperity that "all my quantances [sic] are my betters". Great material, but it could have been just a sentimental romp: there is a lively community chorus supporting six professional actors and four folk musicians.

However, it rises beyond that: Jonathan Girling's score uses rough, contemporary songs blended with subtler, sadder atmospherics. A rough clever set evokes Suffolk sea and land and one final breathtaking moment. It does not underplay the darkness of the characters' lives, and lets them develop. Liam Bewley is John Barry, Margaret's failed lover who moves from awkward bumpkin to being a morally conflicted Revenue man; Peter Sowerbutts's doctor (doubled with old Catchpole) catches his reluctant admiration of the strong-minded girl; Gareth Hinsley is John Luff, Barry's accomplice; and Becky Pennick has several roles including Molly, a goodtime girl. Francis Wolff plays the handsome sailor, and again is given sufficient chance to grow up, hesitate, struggle and fall into laddish bad company at the expense of his lover. And, might I say, to do a really impressive step-dance and handstand at the riotous harvest-home scene.

Above all, Rosalind Steele as the heroine is a real find, delivering a performance of shining unaffected simplicity both in courtship and defiance. Her final faltering song of lonely grief snaps into "I must find myself another song" . And, as she turns, her shadow against the Antipodean sun grows taller.

Libby Purves