PLAYWRIGHT Tabitha Hayward, who is about to start a new job at London’s famous Royal Court, was surprised when she left her Dorset home for Oxford University and the working world to find that the hill forts she regarded as ordinary landscape features were not widespread across the country.

Now she has returned “home” to see her play Fort, set on a Dorset hill fort, performed on stages across the south west in a production by Dorsetborn, the Wimborne-based company created by Rohan Gotobed. Tabitha has been writing, and submitting, plays since her early teens, and is delighted that Fort, which was first workshopped at Poole Lighthouse, has its premiere on a tour that takes in the tiny corrugated tin village hall at Belchalwell (where we saw it), Bath’s award winning Ustinov Studio, the Palace Court Theatre in Bournemouth and the Earthhouse at Cranborne’s Ancient Technology Centre, as well as other venues.

Two girls, Daisy and Viv, have been friends since infancy, supporting each other through the trials of family life, school contests and jealousies, small-town trouble-making and gossip, and the pressures of looking to the future. All that time, they have been able to escape up the nearby hill to Fort – an ancient earthwork whose precise history is lost in times’ mists. It gives them a panoramic view of their countryside, safe from warring parents, vengeful cattle, hormone-surging boys and annual traditions that are becoming ever more intrusive.

When we meet them, both are teetering between childhood and adulthood. Daisy hasn’t been in school for days. Viv wants to know why. They have never had secrets.

Daisy’s secret is of the supernatural variety, but will Viv believe her?

Martha Harlan and Megan Marszal viscerally capture the relationship between these two young women, and Tabitha Hayward’s writing is full of wit and dread, fun and fear. Any play that links the bus service to Yeovil and a dance based on the names of Hall and Woodhouse beers is a sure-fire triumph in Dorset, but Fort is much more than a local entertainment. Its insights are profoundly touching, humorous and totally convincing.

Rohan Gotobed, who grew up in Wimborne, directs with a sure and nuanced hand. Fort raises
timeless issues, questions orthodoxies, floats the unanswerable questions of time and space and celebrates the power of true friendship. It’s well worth a visit.

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