2 April
April is the right month to stage and to watch a production of The Canterbury Tales. It’s the exact point during a year sometime in the 1380s when the pilgrims bound for Canterbury assembled at the Tabard Inn in Southwark during Chaucer’s ‘sweet showers’ of spring.
A wet evening in early April of 2024 in Oxford’s St Mary Magdalen Church saw the Half Cut Theatre Company coming close to the end of their own pilgrimage-production of Chaucer’s classic, a tour which has taken them across southern England and which finishes appropriately in Canterbury on Sunday, 7 April.
Chaucer’s stories have lasted because, underneath the surface details of medieval life, they tell the truth about human nature and because they are brilliantly constructed. This Half Cut Theatre production takes some of the best, while referencing or even starting a few others before discarding them. The Knight’s Tale, for example, is worthy but a touch tedious while The Clerk’s Tale is problematic in its treatment of the central female character.
What we get, then, are exuberant reworkings, beginning with The Pardoner’s Tale, here relocated to the Wild West, with a trio of desperadoes setting off in quest of death and discovering instead a cache of gold, all to the accompaniment of Georgia Leila Stoller’s twanging guitar and country lyrics. The charming but pointed Nun’s Priest Tale, with its farmyard setting and talking animals, is presented as the pilot for a children’s tv show with James Camp, one of the co-founders of Half Cut, as an over-the-top director.
The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer’s rudest story, is given the Benny Hill treatment with Hollie-Anne Price as the wife who is lusted over by a student and, yes, a milkman. The sexual shenanigans are artfully veiled by a series of double-entendres about cakes and baking, and the whole thing is carried off with a fine sense of its own absurdity. The Wife of Bath’s Tale is a little more serious and the only tale to acknowledge the Middle Ages, even if it’s the form of a cod-Arthurian setting.
Overseeing proceedings is Alex Wilson, another co-founder of Half Cut and here the landlord of the Tabard Inn and originator of the notion that the pilgrims should tell tales, each one of which will bring the group a little nearer to Canterbury. This zany and good-natured production of The Canterbury Tales is very much a communal affair and it’s a tribute to the four players that the set, designed by Hazel McIntosh, does sometimes seem to contain a whole pubful of pilgrims, scrambling, squabbling, laughing.
Audience participation is a feature of the show. If this raises in you the usual English mixture of terror and embarrassment, don’t worry (much). Spectators are nominated as extra pilgrims, with one even being being invited up on stage to deliver a saucy limerick. During The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and in keeping with the moral of the story, women in the audience are asked what it is they really want. Answers in Oxford ranged from ‘love’ to ‘respect’ to ‘a puppy’. Apparently someone in a Cambridge audience requested a dishwasher.
It’s also a PWYD (Pay What You Decide) show, with a collection being taken at the end. Good psychology, as by then a genuine rapport has been established between audience and cast. Half Cut Theatre are bringing something new and engaging to a very old tradition of travelling players.
★★★★☆ Philip Gooden, 3 April 2024
Photo credit: Harry Elletson
