Among English literary greats, Geoffrey Chaucer is rivalled only by Shakespeare and Jane Austen in inspiring updated adaptations.

The Wife of Willesden
Kiln Theatre, London

Among English literary greats, Geoffrey Chaucer is rivalled only by Shakespeare and Jane Austen in inspiring updated adaptations. In 1975, Alan Plater’s Trinity Tales on BBC2 brilliantly translated the competitive anecdotalists of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales into Wakefield Rugby League fans swapping stories on the cup final bus to London. Later, BBC1’s Canterbury Tales found early twenty-first-century equivalents for Chaucer characters, memor­ably including Julie Walters as a Wife of Bath transformed into a much-married TV star.

The bawdy serial spouse, called Alyson or Alys in the original, receives another compelling remodelling in The Wife of Willesden, Zadie Smith’s transition to the London Borough of Brent, the setting for most of her fiction, including the standout novels, White Teeth (2000) and NW (2012).

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