A one-man show has obvious challenges, but equally offers a world of possibilities. Unconfined by a rigid or specific set our imaginations, at the merest prompting can take us anywhere the dramatist would care to lead. In the first half of the show director and dramatist, Gareth Armstrong, has his Oscar in black Victorian morning suit on a black stage against a black background and there we stay.
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“The directors have learned that fundamental lesson of theatre (known indeed by striptease artists) that to suggest is often more powerful than to show. Morris’s other revival, Swallows and Amazons, bears this out. He has become a master of imaginative stagecraft and like Orson Welles, who brought Moby Dick to the London stage some half century ago, he relishes making the seemingly impossible possible. Total war calls for total theatre and in this production the two are well matched. “
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This happy marriage of circus and theatre delivers on all fronts with little nuggets like the woman who was prevented from suicide by the parachuting effect of her crinolines showing something of the potential of this kind of collaboration the unexplored terrain of which lies before us like a gaping chasm. The play is a fitting tribute to and triumphant celebration of ‘The ornament of Bristol and wonder of the age’. Bristolians will love it as will anyone with the vaguest interest in one universally recognized as amongst the greatest of Britons.
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There is no question in my mind as to the best theatre of the year; that has to go to the Ustinov in Bath. The plays, both imported and produced have been of the highest quality and that applies to the acting, the writing, the direction and the sets. Let’s hope that under artistic director, Laurence Boswell, the continued mix of home-grown works with his excellent selection of international plays maintains the standard.
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“. . . Helen Edmunson’s script sucks the marrow from the book whilst Tom Morris’s direction (revived in this production by Pieter Lawman), spreads it across the stage in a dazzling display of theatrical ingenuity. It is as imaginative in its staging as the story is in its mapping of the inner terrain of a group of children given the whole world as their life’s stage. . . This is five star entertainment for any one who is or ever has been a child with an imagination and is itself a perfect treasure to lock away in your hoard of memories. . .”
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