Six plays, six places. Plays about and for these places. Celebrating community, identity, belonging.
Each play lasted between 40 and 60 minutes and today all six were performed together for the first time. The same 6 performers acted in all of them, and so, because they obviously needed some rest between the plays, the day, as far as the audience was concerned, was very long and dragged out. The first play started at 1:00pm and the curtain came down on the final play at 9:00pm.
Before the plays started, writer Chris Thorpe stood on the stage to welcome us all. He also read out what can only be described as a disclaimer. He stated that what we were about to see what not supposed to be representations of the people of each place. We were not to expect them to talk like or even behave like, or even perhaps feel like the citizens of the places represented. Instead, these plays had been collated and written after speaking to people of these places and being in these places finding things out for themselves, and then amalgamating these experiences into the plays we would see. On the one hand this was totally understandable, however on the other I didn't understand at all how, when at times neither writing nor casting were in harmony - these are new plays, unpublished works, and could at any point have been changed to suit the cast or the cast changed to suit the play.
Various themes ran though these plays; and not just those connected to community and belonging either. There was death and suicide cropping up in almost every story. Bigotry, racism, mistrust (or maybe even distrust) of foreigners, tourism, people leaving and returning, poverty and lack of work, and a sense of nostalgia - holding on to past traditions and ways of life which are being eroded. It was this last item which seemed the bedrock of the plays. It is the lives, the ways, the traditions, the customs of each place which keep them turning, keep them unique, and despite modernisation and globalisation, we should acknowledge and celebrate these differences and try to preserve them as much as possible.
The same stage set was used for all plays, with only small items brought on such as miniature houses, ferris wheels, a model ship in a small water tank, model electricity pylons etc. Something pertinent not only to the place but also the story. There were also several screens placed around the periphery so that image or images of the place / story could be shown too - sheep shearing, bell ringing etc. This simplicity and neatness worked surprisingly well.
For the first three plays (Eskdale, Staindrop and Whitby) very little changed. The directing, the pace and even the characters seemed to be reworkings of or angles of the same thing. All three were quite melancholy and had little in variation of pace or mood. [despite the premise of the 'Staindrop' play offering far more potential than was delivered]. It was only after the long 90 minute tea break when we came back to watch the last three plays did the pace, the mood, the directing and the whole ethos of the plays take on a more positive direction. The sense of 'community', the sense of 'belonging' and the sense of 'identity' was brought forward much clearer and utilised local community members in two of them - 'Boston' saw the play end with a rap comedy duo from the town, whilst 'Stoke' had a group of hand-bell ringers from Kindern. These ideas (as well as bringing on a falcon for the 'Staindrop' play) were lovely and felt much more authentic and what the whole 'Mystery' cycle should be about. Without these local and real interjections, the plays may well have become very stilted. Of course performing them in isolation in their 'home towns' would undoubtedly have a very different effect from performing them as pieces of theatre on a stage, and I also feel the expectations of audiences would be quite different for each.
The final play 'Manchester' was the simplest and yet the most powerful. The cast sat in a circle on the periphery of the stage, and without moving spoke simply and emotively sometimes in unison sometimes in verse but always truthfully, about the Manchester Arena bombing. The final words being that even the bomber was a Mancunian - one of us - and perhaps we could have done more and held out a bigger hand to him than the one offered him from elsewhere. "The story that we tell is that we care."
Written by Chris Thorpe and directed by Sam Pritchard, (and developed by both), these plays are very much in the spirit of the old Mystery-cycle style community play, but I feel would certainly work better in a non-theatre setting. The directing and the stage setting - highly precise and neat for the theatre, would work much better if taken to a car park, deconstructed, made larger-than-life, and using make-shift props played to passers-by. There was a negative juxtaposition between a polished and professional theatre play, and a piece of community theatre celebrating and glorifying local life.
Of the six craftful performers in this cycle I particularly enjoyed Nigel Barrett in all of his roles, Nadia Clifford in her role in 'Stoke', and Andrew Sheridan in his role in 'Whitby'. Benjamin Cawley, Lauretta Essien and Hannah Ringham completed the talented sextet.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 4/11/18
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