Until a theatre was built in Inverness in the 1970s, Aberdeen was the most northerly outpost of the British touring theatre circuit. As such, it boasts not one but two auditoriums designed by the great Frank Matcham, and has played host to everyone from Edmund Kean to Vivien Leigh.

Actually creating anything, though, was another matter. Long have been the arguments about why Scotland’s third city, with its two universities and, latterly, its oil wealth, has been unable to sustain even the smallest producing theatre. The local council’s reputation for parsimony was often blamed, but it seems that it wasn’t so much meanness as incompetence, recently shown to be on such a scale that the Accounts Commission has had to bring in outsiders to sort it out. What better moment, then, for the biggest arts organisation in the city, His Majesty’s Theatre, to get back on the producing roster after nearly half a century.

To do so, they have chosen Alastair Cording’s adaptation of Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s much loved novel, set just down the road in the farming country of the Mearns.

And a handsome, well-made effort it is too, thanks in no small measure to the expert but unobtrusive direction of Kenny Ireland and to Hayden Griffin’s deceptively simple designs. A floor of alternating dark and light planks stretches away into the furrows of the drumming ploughland, with a treated photographic backdrop whose colours shift in line with the all-important seasons.

Growing up in the farming community of the Mearns (around the time when His Majesty’s was being built – the majesty in question being Edward VII), young Chris Guthrie is not spared the harsh realities of rural life. Her mother commits suicide, unable to contemplate childbirth for a fourth time; her brother leaves for Argentina, unable to confront their bullying, violent father; the father then dies of a heart attack; and just as she seems to be getting back on her feet, her new young husband is killed in the First World War.

It could be grim melodrama, but Chris’s resilient spirit, and her transparent love for the unforgiving land that bore her, has endeared her to generations of readers, TV viewers and playgoers. Hannah Donaldson, who has already given notice of a big talent in a succession of roles since graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama a year ago brings just the right mixture of bright-eyed innocence and doggedness to the role.

She is well supported by the rest of Ireland’s confident ensemble production, which, in keeping with the world it depicts, is vigorous and robust yet finds wit and warmth among the tougher moments. An impressive and propitious debut.

Until Saturday (Sept 13). Box office: 01224 641122

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