December 31st- Extra Yarn, Sheppy, and Wild Honey
So sorry this is late! But I am here and ready to write about these shows! I’ll be posting the rest of shows shortly!
Extra Yarn adapted by Elinor Cook:
This was a children’s play based on a book with the same title. It was adorable and perfect for the winter season. The theatre, Orange Tree Theatre, does theatre in the round so both Extra Yarn and Sheppy were done in that style. There was a cast of four people, three of which also played instruments- piano, guitar, mandolin, violin, and accordion. Those three actors also played multiple roles, at least 3 each. The main plot is that the young girl Annabelle has found a box of endless yarn and is knitting sweaters and hats for everyone in her town. It was a really adorable play that started out grey scale and grew more and more colorful as time went on. It was short- 1 hr, so it kept the children’s attention. There wasn’t a lot of audience participation- and where there was it wasn’t anything like the pantomime. There was no “ALRIGHT BOYS AND GIRLS!” the characters might say excuse me when they leaned over the seat, or ask one of the children to hold a hat. It was understated, but effective. There were strong musical motifs associated with each character- partly to help the children recognize who was on stage- its difficult when all but one actress has at least 3 roles, but also to introduce the idea of musical motifs as a part of theatre. All in all it was a very cute and very nice show.
Sheppy by Somerset Maugham:
Once again we were at the Orange Tree, only this time we were seeing an adult show. The basic plot of this is that Joe Miller, or Sheppy as he’s called throughout the play, is a hairdresser who one a very large prize in the lottery, 8,500 pounds. His original plan was to give his daughter and his fiance a large wedding, hire a maid to do the ‘rough work’ for his wife, and maybe buy a little cottage in Scotland for himself. But he is soon troubled by the poverty he sees around him and instead decides he shall spend his money by giving it to those that need him, much to the chagrin of his family.
This was a really, really interesting play. I loved the way that it looked at charity and in some sense Christianity. Sheppy says at one point that he ‘wants to live like Jesus’ and his future son in law responds that it simply can’t be done and that well educated people know that the bible isn’t meant to be taken literally and that ‘lowly commoners’ are well equipped enough to know the bible. While I often wanted to hit both the son in law and the daughter upside the head for being so smug and uncaring, they were very funny and very skilled actors. And I do, on some level, understand why they were so upset. Not only could they not afford to get married again, Sheppy was bringing in criminals and prostitutes into his house. It can seem a little scary, I guess.
The set up for this play was very interesting. The first act takes place solely in the barber shop while the other two acts take place in Sheppy’s home. The sets were so difficult to change that the interval between act one and two was there solely to change sets. Both sets were very cool, but the intervals for changing the set made transitions feel a little clunky.
I really loved this show. Sheppy was so earnest in wanting to help his fellow man- to the point of actually creeping some of them out- and his family was so so against it, it hurt to listen too. It was well worth the watch, even if it ended just a tad bit abruptly.
And on the tube between this show and Wild Honey we ran into the actors who played the daughter and son in law! They were very nice and super cool. I was amazed at how quickly they got out of the theatre! It eased the sting of one girl in our class getting a picture of Rufus Sewell. And then later that night some other classmates saw an actor from our final play:
Wild Honey by Anton Chekhov adapted by Michael Frayn:
This is up there with Peter Pan as one of my favorites this trip. Wild Honey is based on a manuscript by Chekhov that was found after his death. The original manuscript is unnamed, unfinished, and 6 hours long. This is adapted to clean up the first act a bit and shorten it to just two hours. Most adaptations are called Platonov, after the main character, but this takes a slightly different approach.
The story takes place in 1800′s Russia in the country. Its about a group of friends and family coming together to meet after a long Russian winter, celebrating the return of Anna Petrovna from the city, and celebrating the marriage of Anna Petrovna’s step son Serge to Sofya . It’s a really nice atmosphere of a tight community in a rural setting- there is a very precarious balance between all their personalities that keeps them afloat. Platonov- close friend of Anna, married to a woman Sasha (sister to the town doctor), old flame of Sofya, and major annoyance of his brother in law’s secret crush- upsets this balance by falling in and out of love with all four of these women. Chekhov wrote this comedy of errors to highlight the comedy in tragedy. Because while this is a tragic play- everyone’s heart is broken and multiple people die- it is also hilarious. There are witty liners, people rushing in and off stage, missed connections, and misunderstandings- it was all very, very funny. It felt like a combination of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. I absolutely loved it.
The set was fantastic- It was huge and so tall! They put real life sized trees and large unfinished movable wood walls up (the trees were birch and the walls were oak. We have a wood nerd on this trip so he knew all) to create a forest and a large house. It made for a great set that the actors ran across wildly. Oh and they shot off a firework in the very beginning. I loved it.
Next two days will follow shortly!
