|
|
|
|
|
|
Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
|
|
Ken Agnew as Bill Bryson, Amy White as his wife Cynthia and Dave Douglas and Maggie Lane as pickets in the battle of Wapping in 1986. Pictures: Alastair Barnsley. Notes from a small Island Highbury Theatre Centre **** Hands up if you possess a counterpane, both hands up if you know what one is. Bill Bryson had no idea, and you suspect that apart from a Dover landlady back in 1973, no one else had had a clue either since around 1600 – the year not the time by the way. The difference was he noticed, and he wondered, and he discovered. I suspect that American born Bill Bryson is far more British than many of those born here, or at least he is far more appreciative and recognising of our quirks, achievements, idiosyncrasies . . . and failures as a people and a nation. His Notes from a Small Island was his eighth book, published in 1995, and the first just about our tiny collection of rocks hovering in the Atlantic off the shoulder of Europe with its odd traditions, even odder habits, a language cobbled together from many other tongues with no set pattern, no structure, and delighting in its irregular verbs and words that mean different things in different parts of the country. Tim Whitnall adapted the book for the stage last year and Ken Agnew gives a superb performance as Bryson in what is a mammoth role, on stage for the entire production, and holding the entire play together – a performance made all the more remarkable by the fact Agnew is also somewhat less than 100 per cent well. He even has a look of Bryson and revels in the sardonic humour, deadpan delivery and close observation of Bryson who first arrived in Britain as a backpacking student for a few months in 1973, decided to stay and ended up working at a psychiatric hospital, in Virginia Water, Surrey. There he met a nurse, Cynthia Billen, who he married in 1975.
Ken Agnew as Bill Bryson on his tour of Britain The couple moved to the USA to complete his degree before returning to settle in Britain in 1977. The book was his farewell tour of Britain before his return home again to his native USA after 20 years in the UK, a tour using only public transport, and recalling episodes of the past two decades and their modern counterparts such as the Dover bench where he slept his first night in Britain, the housing estate where the hospital had once stood, the concrete shopping precincts that transformed interesting town centres into uniform clones as well as the delights of odd named places, historic buildings and sites . . . and people. We meet a whole range of characters, some 80 or so, created by a five strong ensemble of Dave Douglas, Maggie Lane, Sharon McEvoy, in a extremely promising debut, Rob Phillips and Amy White. Amongst the weird and wonderful characters Bryson was to encounter we could pick out Dave Douglas managing to bore the audience into a stupor as a trainspotter even dedicated anoraks would avoid, and then there was Sharon’s Dover landlady with an extensive rule book that would make the laws of cricket, golf and American football combined seem trivial by comparison – remember not to soil the counterpane by the way. Amy White is a delightful Cynthia while Maggie runs a mean Welsh B&B when she is not running Blaenau Ffestiniog station where trains are scheduled to leave a minute before buses arrive. Then there is Rob Phillips who gives us the psychiatric patient who has been asking if the hospital will close in 1980 for 20 years and gets his answer when it burns down after a lightning strike in, you guessed it, 1980. He is also the belligerent wireroom operator at The Times in what was to be the most monumental event in newspapers for more than 200 years, the battle of Wapping as Murdoch took on the print unions, NATSOPA, SLADE, NGA, SOGAT . . . war was declared. It was Bryson’s industry. His parents were both journalists on the Des Moins Register in Ohio and he had found a job on first the Bournemouth Evening Echo before becoming a sub on The Times where the Murdoch war was declared and Bryson and his wife escaped to Yorkshire where he was to do his own writing rather than work in what had become a battleground in a war that was to change the industry nationwide as new technology made old skills redundant, The stand out performance is Agnew, the ever constant. The characterisations of the ensemble demand quick costume changes, different voices and accents and a remarkably rapid turnover, all done smoothly without a hitch, with varying degrees of success from adequate to wonderful as they set scene after scene.
Amy White, left, Maggie Lane and Sharon McEvoy, a shell suit trio enjoying the delights of Calais Bryson is at times a participant at times merely an observer such as when he considers: “Calais only existed to give English people in shell suits somewhere to go for the day.” after a gaggle of luridly clad lassies on what one can only assume was a booze cruise to the Cinque port provide a largely unintelligible Geordie variation of the mother tongue. Agnew’s performance works because he does not appear to be acting, he is just being Bryson, just wandering about the stage, having a conversation with us, telling us what he has found, what he has seen, who he has met, what has baffled him, excited him, intrigued him, disappointed him. Things we have taken for granted without even noticing, things that make us British. It is all done genially, low key in a mildly American accent, after all, much of his life has been spent here, and he has been a British citizen since 2014, is an OBE, so is one of us. It’s as if we have met up with an old mate for what he refers to as a pint of ordinary – whatever that is. I suspect it is a southern term for the pub's regular bitter, just another part of our rich and confusing language. Getting the entirety of mainland Britain, plus Calais, on to the Highbury stage is a challenge well met by Malcolm Robertshaw who creates a whole country from a few chairs, a roll on and off park bench, a telephone box and a beach hut and a few carry on tables leaving the ensemble to set the scenes aided by a rear stage screen wall of location images along with sound effects from Richard Irons. The production has had a sadly troubled history as it was to have been directed by the late Ian Appleby, and was taken on by Denise Phillips who has done a fine job with what is a difficult play to stage. Notes will continue to come from our small island to 07-12-24. Roger Clarke 27-11-24 A counterpane, incidentally, is an obsolete word for a bedspread which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary was last recorded in 1600. So now you know. |
|
|
|
