| A touching love story |
At Hijinx Theatre |
| Hijinx Theatre- Ill Met by Moonlight , Touring , September 28, 2001 |
| A guide to all reviews of Hijinx Theatre can be seen below 2nd June 2020 In Britain, for some reason and unlike much of the rest of Europe, most theatre companies don't have a repertoire - a portfolio of productions that might, like a painters collection, be seen to constitute an "oeuvre". The tradition here (though, perhaps, less so in Wales) is to regard a successful production as a stage in development and to look back is to be somehow retrograde. While you cannot recapture the ephemeral magic of the theatrical occasion, of course, that reluctance to revisit the past (with neither nostalgia nor irony) means we tend to forget or, worse, exaggerate. Charles Way is an underrated playwright (at least underrated by critics: he is highly successful and much admired professionally) because his plays don't easily lend themselves to pompous theoretical analysis - I suspect no Aberystwyth student is going to base their PhD on Way's considerable body of work nor any academic deconstruct his output in Planet. Hijinx's production of his Ill Met By Moonlight helped the company win a BBC Arts Award (remember those ?) in 1994 and their revival of the play serves to remind us of not just how the company has changed but of what a fine piece of intelligent, sensitive, lyrical and accomplished writing this is. Under the direction of Kevin Lewis the play seems even stronger, more dramatic, less whimsical, more unashamedly about love - I would say romantic, but in many ways it is un-romantic in the sense of being more realistic. Paula Gardiner's songs are robust and not overly folksy. Andrew Harrison's simple set is dominated by a raised drum kit, behind which Dyfrig Morris's hulking Puckish Gwarwyn-a-Throt controls his mischievous faery realm with rolls and crashes: cymbals become plates and brushes become flowers. Nia Davies as his changeling prisoner Hedydd beside him looks tiny tucked behind her accordion. In the changing human world, where mechanisation and rationalism are destroying the rural traditions and beliefs, Cler Stevens and Rhodri Hugh are the modest Hereford widow and bluff Radnor bachelor whose gradually growing love and respect has to endure the malevolent intervention of the last of the Bwca. The play is about many things (especially, as much of Charles Way's work, the idea of borders - the action is set not only between Wales and England but between the underworld and ours, between life and death, between traditional and modern) but it works essentially on a very emotional level - one that could easily descend into sentimentality or tweeness. Unlike Les Miller's original 1994 production, here we are not invited to have much sympathy with Gwarwyn-a-Throt and there is little regret for his ultimate demise (slightly problematic, since the performance as much as the character dominates); instead our feelings are concentrated on Mary Morris and Samuel Jenkins, the unlikely but so very human courting couple. Of course love will conquer all, but it does so with lots of twists and turns and not without a struggle. It's a rich script and I fear not all of it registers clearly enough - the magnificent verbal lyricism is sometimes lost, and I missed especially the crucial lines on love which when I saw the show on the first night were not clear. I missed, too, the ambiguity that we feel about change - its inevitability but also the loss of what is left behind - which I find in the script. But the production is well-paced and sensitive and does succeed in drawing us in to the love story, in touching us and moving us and encouraging us to live in the world of imagination. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This is a shorter review by David Adams of the show that was published by the Western Mail : Never return, they say, a sentiment I tend to endorse after going back to the idyllic remote country cottage where I one lived to find the front garden now a by-pass. But Hijinx, knowing a good play when they find one, have revisited their 1994 success, Charles Way's Ill Met By Moonlight, and launched it at Whitchurch High School - and if you can engage an audience made up mainly of restless sophisticated teenagers so that they subside into rapt silence then you have a winner, I'd say. Especially if the play is about those most uncool of things, love, rural matters and fairies. At the turn of the 19th-20th century a mischievous sprite, a drum-playing Puck, and his captive accordionist changeling engage in a contest to see whether two unlikely neighbours can fall in love - a simple tale but told with Way's trademark compassion, wit, ingenuity and feeling for the life around his adopted home, Abergavenny. Kevin Lewis's robust production is an example of perfect timing, varied pace and apposite conjunction of humour and emotion. He has not only an excellent script but a fine cast to work with: Dyfrig Morris is a nimble giant of a sprite who can slip into the guise of an all-too-recognisable English vicar one moment and a vindictive Welsh bailiff the next, the diminutive Nia Davies is his mournful changeling who wants to be liberated from the prison of everlasting limbo, Cler Stephens is the vulnerable proud Hereford widow and Rhodri Hugh the bachelor farmer who woos her. It may sound twee, but it is an eloquent evocation of changing times and a lyrical meditation on the whole subject of borders - and is genuinely moving, so much so that hardened Whitchurch schoolkids could be heard to snuffle. Subsequent venues (and there are over forty of them) may prove easier to win over but this was a notable victory of the power of theatre to start Hijinx's long tour |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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