My Play Review

[angelophile]

A very glowing review in today's paper - particularly drawing attention to the set design, which obviously makes me happy. Great stuff. Totally chuffed.

Ingenious staging in a heart-tugging production

Blue Remembered Hills, Mowlem Theatre, Swanage

ALL praise to the company, and in particular director Gina Lewis, for succeeding in the difficult task of staging a play that was written for television.

The different areas of the setting - a wood, open ground, a hollow, a field and a barn - are easy to depict on location, yet might have caused problems on stage. Yet thanks to ingenious lighting effects and an impressive set they came to life well.

Dennis Potters play is set during 1943 and features seven small children, all played by adults. Willie, Peter, John, Raymond, Angela, Audrey and Donald are typically boisterous children who fight and play games, best friends one minute and enemies the next - but all the while living with the fears that war brings.

The entire cast - Tony Hessey, Mike Hill, Nick Clarke, Jeremy Gough, Rosemary Ford, Pat Jones and Tony Bailey - resisted any urge to "play it for laughs" and gave genuine characterisations that at times really tore at the heart strings. Their costumes and mannerisms were so much those of 1940s children that it became easy to believe that that was what they were. But I'm glad for the sake of one small furry animal (not real either, thank goodness) that they weren't.

(The last paragraph refering to the stuffed squirrel that got kicked to death on stage every night. Poor little bugger.)