Asthall Manor is no stranger to drama. The country house, near Burford, was the home of the infamous Mitford sisters and has become best known in recent years as the home of the On Form sculpture exhibition.

Now, its magnificent ballroom is set to become a venue for thought-provoking theatre.

First up, with two performances tomorrow, is Castaways, a contemporary play about friendship and tribal loyalties in a volatile inner city area.

The play, written by Atiha Sen Gupta and directed by Yasmin Sidwha, does not shy away from showing what can lead vulnerable people into extremism. The historic resonance will be strong, but with a twist: the characters portrayed in Castaways come from very different backgrounds to the eccentric and privileged Mitford sisters, who had their own family tensions, with one sister a committed communist and another two holding extreme right-wing views.

Asthall Manor’s ballroom was converted from an agricultural barn by the Mitfords’ father, Lord Redesdale, when they first moved into the manor in 1919. It had been a convalescent home during the First World War, but he set about restoring it, and built the ballroom, with its vast mullioned bay window and barrel-vaulted ceiling with arts and crafts plasterwork, as an extension for his older children – what might today be called the teenage annexe!

Diana Mitford – later married to fascist leader Oswald Mosley – wrote in her memoirs: “This large room, furnished with hundreds of old books, a grand piano and sofas with high windows looking south and east, was all the world to my brother Tom and me at Asthall.

“He played all day, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, and I lay on a sofa, reading and listening.”

The upcoming performances may be rather less relaxing – and exclusive – than the gentle tinkling of the ivories by Tom Mitford.

I have been lucky enough to own the manor since 1998, and I have always liked the idea of using this idyllic setting to nudge people just gently out of their comfort zones, while still having a lovely time. Theatre and poetry have always played a part in on form – both the Oxford School of Drama and the Scary Little Girls touring theatre company have put on performances in recent years – and hosting thought-provoking theatre in the ballroom at other times is a natural development.

In future, we would like to tie in theatrical performances with openings of the Potting Shed cafe, with chef Fiona Cullinane.

Castaways is a carefully-researched play about three close friends from different backgrounds who have grown up together until events blow their world apart.

Director Yasmin Sidhwa, the founder of Mandala Theatre, was creative learning director at Oxford’s Pegasus Theatre for 17 years.

“Opposing views are rife in the UK today and people are becoming ever more polarised, just like the 1930s when the Government made a case for huge public spending cuts causing widespread strikes”, she comments.

“The Mitford sisters held extreme opposing views and were radicalised. Castaways looks into how young people in the UK today can be exposed to extremist views, so the setting at Asthall Manor is very interesting for us.”

The next play at Asthall Manor will be on a very different theme, but no less challenging.

The Old House, a play written and performed by Kate Maravan, is about memory, loss and mother-daughter relationships, and has recently had a sell-out performance at the Camden Fringe, with reviews calling it “elegant and beautifully performed” and “a wonderfully revealing piece of theatre.”

Kate Maravan plays both a woman and her elderly mother, whose memory is going as her daughter experiences the loss of her own child.

The Old House will show at Asthall Manor on January 19, 2019.