Kings Theatre, Edinburgh
3 stars
Anyone who discovered Flora Thompson’s fictionalised memoir of late nineteenth century country matters via the BBC bonnet-and-big-frock department’s version, currently standing at three series and counting, are in for a shock if they expect the same of this Bill Kenwright-backed stage revival. Because, rather than TV naturalism, Keith Dewhurst’s adaptation of Thompson’s trilogy is rooted in the late 1970s out-front ensemble style honed by original director Bill Bryden during his time producing promenade epics with his company in the National Theatre’s Cottesloe space.
More pertinently, perhaps, Joe Harmston’s revival thirty years on is just of the first, Lark Rise segment of Dewhurst’s two plays, so Becci Gemmell’s narrator heroine Laura never actually gets to Candleford, which, as with the Moscow of Three Sisters, remains a hazily aspirational place where land-owning folk hold sway over the little people. What Harmston does retain is Ashley Hutchings’ rousing live English folk score that punctuates each scene of Laura and her brother Edmund’s wanderings through golden-meadowed days about to be decimated by encroaching industrialisation and the looming spirit of the Great War.
Therein lies the problem. Because while the songs are gloriously evocative, stuck in a proscenium arch the action itself looks mundane and incidental, with little of any the play’s sprawling intimacy connecting in the way that it should. This is a shame for such a socially engaged work which cries out for a more audacious approach than a large-scale tour like this one allows for. The seeds are there as Gemmell leads a cast of fourteen as gamely as she can, but this feels like a work that was pruned before its true beauty was allowed to blossom.
The Herald, October 20th 2010
3 stars
Anyone who discovered Flora Thompson’s fictionalised memoir of late nineteenth century country matters via the BBC bonnet-and-big-frock department’s version, currently standing at three series and counting, are in for a shock if they expect the same of this Bill Kenwright-backed stage revival. Because, rather than TV naturalism, Keith Dewhurst’s adaptation of Thompson’s trilogy is rooted in the late 1970s out-front ensemble style honed by original director Bill Bryden during his time producing promenade epics with his company in the National Theatre’s Cottesloe space.
More pertinently, perhaps, Joe Harmston’s revival thirty years on is just of the first, Lark Rise segment of Dewhurst’s two plays, so Becci Gemmell’s narrator heroine Laura never actually gets to Candleford, which, as with the Moscow of Three Sisters, remains a hazily aspirational place where land-owning folk hold sway over the little people. What Harmston does retain is Ashley Hutchings’ rousing live English folk score that punctuates each scene of Laura and her brother Edmund’s wanderings through golden-meadowed days about to be decimated by encroaching industrialisation and the looming spirit of the Great War.
Therein lies the problem. Because while the songs are gloriously evocative, stuck in a proscenium arch the action itself looks mundane and incidental, with little of any the play’s sprawling intimacy connecting in the way that it should. This is a shame for such a socially engaged work which cries out for a more audacious approach than a large-scale tour like this one allows for. The seeds are there as Gemmell leads a cast of fourteen as gamely as she can, but this feels like a work that was pruned before its true beauty was allowed to blossom.
The Herald, October 20th 2010
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