Chris Eldon Lee reviews “An August Bank Holiday Lark”, which is at the New Vic in Newcastle-Under-Lyme until Saturday 1st March before touring.
Shropshire’s most famous librarian Philip Larkin supplied the title for Deborah McAndrew’s latest play, which returns Northern Broadsides Theatre Company to the very core of its convictions….with truly wonderful results.
The summer in question is that of 1914 and McAndrew and her audience know more about the next four years than her village full of working class lads and lasses can possibly imagine. Dramatic irony is a powerful tool and she uses it exquisitely. For example, the play has a slow, almost bucolic opening, and I wondered why so much time was spent discussing chickens – until she dropped the vital clue that Albert the village cockerel had a ready supply of white feathers.
It’s a good 25 minutes to the first clog dance, but it arrives with punchy panache and every step transports us to the Pennine parish of Saddleworth, home of the Rushcart folk tradition – which, we learn, is already in decline as Wakes week holidaymakers head for Blackpool or Aberystwyth. “Imagine it” says Barrie Rutter as the squire, “people going to Wales on holiday – on purpose!”. He’s desperate to keep the tradition alive and none of the dancers can image it will the last celebration for some time.
When the famous cart arrives, it arrives in pieces and is assembled before our very eyes. It’s like watching a cottage being thatched in two minutes flat. The one lad not fit for the war to come is hoisted high onto its saddle and the whole scene is a spectacular first half finale.
The lads have, of course, signed up either from loyalty, peer pressure or a need to prove themselves to the father-in-law to be. In two pieces of stunning stagecraft their Morris sticks become rattling rifles and the scene in which ‘news’ arrives from Gallipoli is doubled in its devastation by an oh-so-simple slight of hand.
The production really is polished to perfection and the underlying threads of story pull at the heartstrings in a manner way above sentimentality. McAndrew has the Squire’s more sensitive son composing a sonnet by a peaceful tarn before joining his regiment, from which he will write “the best letters home”. His daughter’s sweetheart has to depart on his wedding day, leaving a nine-month surprise which he may never see. Other lads recognise the risks, but are desperate to see beyond “this fraction of the world”.
These are themes that rise again and again in wartime stories – and we’re about to be inundated with them. But the way they are whole-heartedly wrapped up in the daily life of just one village gives them a fresh energy and renewed resonance.
Thanks to Conrad Nelson’s artistry, the clogging is superb throughout; from the rumbustious, clap-along wedding celebration. to a deeply dignified, black-and-white- clad dance of remembrance – which brought tears. I saw the steps and heard the hypnotic folk music in a new light last night.
Barrie Rutter has been director of Northern Broadsides for a long time, but this co-production with the New Vic must be his finest hour. He commands the commotions with a raucous whistle – and, when tragedy strikes, holds a silent stage for an age just long enough to share his bewilderment and grief.
This show is so good, people are already booking to see it twice. Get in quick before they take all the seats.
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