Details
Venue: Hampton Hill Theatre, Hampton
Upcoming Shows and Times: Thursday 15th – Saturday 17th November, 7.45 pm
Tickets: £14 www.teddingtontheatreclub.org.uk
Our Verdict
Although best known for his Peter Pan character it is less well remembered that J. M. Barrie was a popular and highly respected playwright during his lifetime (indeed Peter Pan was a play before it was a novel). Combine this with his generosity and philanthropic nature (he famously left his Peter Pan royalties to The Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital) and you have a combination that would deliver war plays that not only ensured a large audience but that audience would find consolation therein.
Set in the intimate Studio space at the Hampton Hill Theatre, members of the Teddington Theatre Club perform the 2 one-act plays with some relish and no little aplomb. ’The Old Lady Shows Her Medals’ is the first and more successful of the two. We meet a trio of ‘charwomen’; Mrs Dowie (Sue Bell), Mrs Tully (Liz Salaman) and Mrs Haggerty (Mandy Stenhouse) in the former’s front room where they are trying to outdo each other in a way that is reminiscent of an early version of Monty Python’s Yorkshiremen: Whose boy is in the most danger? Which is in the finest regiment? Whose son writes the most loving letters home? But Mrs Dowie has a secret that is threatened to be exposed when a soldier (Charlie Higgs) returns on leave.
The issue is resolved but ultimately the soldier meets the fate of many soldiers before and after him and the final scene is handled in a dignified and sensitive way.
‘A Well Remembered Voice’ is more difficult to assimilate. The play’s precept that a family can contact their dead son through Spiritualism seems to ring hollow to the modern ear. It’s hard to know if Barrie believed in this or just understood that it gave consolation to many of his audience.
Andy Hewitt, who we saw briefly as the somewhat unctuous cleric in ‘The Old Lady Shows Her Medals’ returns in a more substantial role as Robert Don, father of Dick his recently deceased soldier son (again, the frankly unlucky Charlie Higgs). Dick reappears to his father to tell him that he has to ‘buck up’, take up his old hobbies and not allow his sadness to show. The young ghost even hints that they get bonus points beyond the veil if their parents seem happy and ‘carry on’. The boy’s description of the divide between life and death sounds somewhat naïve and though he doesn’t describe it as an ‘awfully big adventure’ there are definitely hints of the boy who wouldn’t grow up.
The direction over both pieces (by Sally Hansen) was unfussy and well-handled and the music which was played before and after the plays as well as during the interval was well curated and avoided the obvious WW1 songs.
We have to imagine the piece performed to an audience, many of whom will have lost their nearest and dearest in the Great War, however it does feel like benevolent indoctrination in the present day. These nicely played pieces suffered only because the times, the culture and our understanding of war have changed over the last 100 years.
