THE hard hats, the yellow jackets, the drilling, the painting, the nailing, this is York Theatre Royal today, as the £4.1 million redevelopment takes ever more conclusive shape at England's longest-standing theatre outside London.

Will it be ready in time for the grand re-opening on April 22 when the curtain rises on Damian Cruden's world premiere of Bryony Lavery's newly commissioned stage adaptation of Brideshead Revisited?

"Yes," says the phlegmatic artistic director, as the William Birch construction team in yellow buzzes around him in a swarm of activity. No doubt the question will be revisited as the days tick down, but after an extended residency at the National Railway Museum, it is time to pack away the Signal Box Theatre tent as the Theatre Royal returns home.

The new adaptation of Brideshead Revisited is a co-production between the Theatre Royal and English Touring Theatre, one that will be taken on tour after the Theatre Royal premiere, taking York out of York like The Railway Children before it.

The Castle Howard link to the Evelyn Waugh story of Charles Ryder's heady days at Brideshead Castle with Julia and Sebastian Flyte, fostered through the filming of the 1991 television series and later the 2008 film, gave an instant appeal to turning it into a play, but there were plenty of other reasons too.

"I do think it's a pertinent piece of storytelling. It's an exciting story, a sexy story, a great story," says Damian. "It's Downton Abbey with knobs on, and we are always fascinated by the notion of an elite group of people, the elitism of the aristocracy and their stately homes. That's why we traipse around National Trust houses, giving us access to them and being amazed by what it was like to live in those houses.

York Press:

Damian Cruden: "Brideshead Revisited is Downtown Abbey with knobs on"

"With our 'relationship' with Castle Howard, through the TV series and the film, it feels like a very local narrative too, and maybe in common with all great stories, and in particularly all great theatre stories, Waugh's story pits the personal against the epic.

"It's a phenomenally personal story, where you see the excess of it all, the profanity, the fun, the waste of it, but at the same time, they still carry off the very public face of high society, even though they have their trousers down.

"The story is critical, but it's not inhuman. You care for Sebastian, for Julia; they're all real characters and you end up being engaged by them."

Damian is working in tandem with playwright Bryony Lavery every step of the way, renewing their partnership from the Theatre Royal production of Kate Atkinson's Behind The Scenes At The Museum. "We've had a lot of conversations about what we were dealing with here, but you don't need to 'direct' too much with a writer like Bryony," he says.

"From where our conversations took us, Bryony has done four or five drafts of the script and we've also done work with actors to see how it flows, and what you ultimately get is more than you did from the television series.

"In reality, the vast majority of the book is given over to the relationship between Julia and Charles; the relationship of Charles and Sebastian is only the forerunner for that. What Charles finds and ultimately loses is his relationship with Julia."

Damian and Bryony also discussed where Catholicism "sits in the story and what Catholicism means to the thrust of the play". "She has placed it beautifully in how we tell the story, which is beautifully written by Bryony and very faithful to the novel," he says.

"There's a lot of space in her writing; she's very succinct and she's phenomenally clear in her choice of language and how she directs the flow of the narrative. She can take five pages and turn them into into four lines, which is partly down to what she chooses to focus on in any given moment, and she also has the gift of letting her writing do the talking.

"Every time you get a new draft from her, she has shifted the script in a way where you absolutely know why she's done it."

York Theatre Royal and English Touring Theatre present Brideshead Revisited at York Theatre Royal from April 22 to April 30 and June 21 to 25 and on tour. York box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk