Almost sixty years have passed since this play about a family in a black American ghetto was first performed yet its many layered messages of human emotion shine through as brightly as in1959.
Almost sixty years have passed since this play about a family in a black American ghetto was first performed yet its many layered messages of human emotion shine through as brightly as in1959.
Set in a London bedsit during the early eighties Richard Harris’s psychological thriller gets off to a slow and somewhat plodding start.
Set in a London bedsit during the early eighties Richard Harris’s psychological thriller gets off to a slow and somewhat plodding start.
Two men meet on a roof and at first glance they have nothing at all in common other than their job at a commercial lettering factory. One is Frank (Robert Gill), a man who has played it by the book for over thirty years while harbouring an apparently hopeless desire to become a novelist. The other is sixteen year old trainee Alan (Thomas Pickles) whose interests appear limited to his band Lizard and iPod. Frank gives a disinterested Alan the benefit of his considerable experience as Head of Installation at Forshaws and how it is ‘in life’ generally.
This adaptation of Hemingway’s phenomenal five-part novel is brave, given the size of the task in hand, and courageous in its use of experimental mixed performance media. Act 1 has the character of a film yet Act 2 relies on old-fashioned drama to tell the story of a doomed love affair that takes place in Italy and Switzerland during the final year of World War One. The action is frequently accompanied by incongruous piano music reminiscent of Brief Encounter. On-stage cameras track Catherine Barkley, a nursing assistant, and Frederic Henry, an American in the Italian army, (Laura Atherton and Jude Monk McGowan) as they meet and fall in love. The actors’ narrative is reflected on the set walls but distractingly, the voices and images were out of sync.
Craig Gilbert’s adaptation of Jerome K Jerome’s classic comedic novel is a pleasant, if mad cap, way of spending an evening at the theatre. What could go wrong?
Review: Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks and adapted by Rachel Wagstaff, New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, March 25, until Saturday March 30
