As the beautiful and haunting singing of the female farmhands sprang up all around us, the lady next to me whispered loudly to no one in particular, ‘This is so moving!’.
We were two minutes into an in-the-round performance of ‘Lark Rise’, Keith Dewhurst’s play based on Flora Thompson’s 1939 novel, and the positive response from the audience was immediately evident.
‘The action is all around us; we feel momentarily part of their lives’
Set at the end of the 19th century, the play depicts the humble lives of everyday rural folk in Oxfordshire in the fictional village of Lark Rise, and is a patchwork of little stories and scenes where we share the good times and the bad with a host of colourful characters, all admirably played by amateur actors at Chipping Norton Theatre.
Women gossip around fruit stalls, a tired soldier returns home from a war, a poor elderly man is carted off to the workhouse, children enquire ‘what’s Oxford like?’ as if it might be another planet.
‘The play’s in-the-round enables the actors to rub shoulders with the audience who are stood or perched in every available space’
A mad old man wants to reveal his ‘Barcelona nuts’, girls scare each other with witch stories, a proud mother proudly plaits her 12 year old daughter’s hair for her first day of work as a maid at the big house, a swarm of bees periodically hums round the theatre and women dream of luxuries such as tripe and snuff.
As the characters laugh and cry, dance and sing, banter, natter and dream their way through their lives, we realise Lark Rise is about nothing and yet everything – a kaleidoscopic view of a bygone era.
The play’s in-the-round setting makes the evening even more special as the actors literally rub shoulders with the audience who are stood or perched in any available space.
The action is all around us; we feel momentarily part of their lives. That lady sitting next to me was right: ‘really moving’. And unforgettable, I would add.
Edward Bliss
Lark Rise runs at The Theatre Chipping Norton until Sunday June 9, and is the first part of two epic in-the-round community theatre productions, being performed as a double bill with Barn Dance by Mike Bartlett on June 17-20. Book here for tickets: https://www.chippingnortontheatre.com/events/lark-rise
