TWENTY years ago, a little girl growing up in a Peak District village began preparing for a stage role she never knew she was going to play, writes DAVID WARD.

“I watched the 1991 Disney film of Beauty and the Beast over and over again and loved it,” said actress Eleanor Sutton. Now she finds herself playing Beauty on stage at Theatre by the Lake.

After poring over the script and rehearsing hard, she realised that there was more to this strange story than those happy days replaying the Disney video had suggested. “In the version by Laurence Boswell that we are using, Beauty is a brilliantly strong-willed young woman. She is a heroine without knowing it. There is no arrogance about her; she is super-headstrong and follows her heart. She is a joy to play.”

Eleanor was at Theatre by the Lake this time last year but as a member of the audience rather than as a performer, having come to support friends who were in The Secret Garden, last year’s much-loved Christmas show. She appreciated the special atmosphere of the theatre then and is enjoying working in it now. “When you sit in the auditorium, it feels likes a really big, grand space. But as you look out from the stage, it feels intimate and inviting rather than intimidating.”

Eleanor has had plenty of time to get to know the theatre. After two weeks of rehearsals in London, the whole company moved up to Keswick just before bonfire night. “It rained for our entire first week here and I thought that might be it for the rest of our stay,” said Eleanor. “But the last few days have been unbelievably beautiful.”

And so Keswick works its unique, if sometimes soggy, charm. Not that Eleanor and her eight fellow actors have had much time to explore the town or the fells. During rehearsals, they were putting in a five and a half day week with 11-hour days on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“It’s been pretty full-on and we’ve been working super-hard; and more than half the cast have suffered from a winter lurgy. Many were just about getting through rehearsals before stumbling home to sleep. But we are having so much fun that you kind of forget that you are working. Sometimes, when my money comes through on a Friday, I think: ‘Oh yes, I get paid for this’.”

Much of the company’s rare spare time has been spent in The Dog and Gun pub. They went to the quiz there and came joint last but are hoping to rise up the rankings before the end of the show’s run.

Eleanor had singing lessons as a child and appeared in school productions of The Sound of Music, Twelfth Night and The Tempest but never seriously considered the stage as a career until her late teens. “Quite rightly, I was warned about how precarious a career it can be and I think my sensible brain told me I should go and do something ‘normal’.”

At the last minute, she applied for and won a place at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London. “In the end, my silly brain beat my sensible brain.” She can’t be that silly: she left Mountview with a first class degree in 2014 and has been in work pretty consistently since, most recently at Chester’s new Storyhouse Theatre where she appeared in two very different productions that played in repertory.

Her career began with a panto in Hastings and soon moved on to London’s Old Vic for a play about education that divided the critics. After that, she joined the Finborough Theatre in Fulham for a revival of a neglected play by John Galsworthy. Then it was back to an Ibsen play at the Old Vic and on to the National Theatre, where she played a baroness in a revival of Amadeus, Peter Shaeffer’s play about Mozart; as an understudy, she also went on as Constanze (Mrs Mozart).

The Finborough has 55 seats; the Olivier at the National has 1,150. But she found the tiny Finborough much more intimidating, with members of the audience just feet from her. The Olivier audience kept its distance.

Of her performance at the Finborough, one critic wrote: “Eleanor Sutton…seems to elude pure joy about everything.” With her throaty gurgle of a laugh and her unflagging enthusiasm, Eleanor seems to have packed that joy when she headed north to spend ten weeks in Keswick.

After the final curtain in mid-January, she will take a break to read and do some cooking. “I also like to go away if I can after a longish job. My brother is about to go to Sri Lanka for a year so I might be heading there.”

Unlike Keswick in January, Sri Lanka will then be in its dry season.

Beauty and the Beast runs until January 12.

Box office 017687-74411.