Through a series of flash-backs involving the youthful Sally and Raymond we discover what her memories are made of. Young Sally is a bit flighty, a bit flirty. He’s a bit nerdy, a bit introvert, fiddling with wires, circuit boards and articulated pieces of metal. She brings him out of himself, he gives her a rock to cling to. She has ambitions to become an actress or a singer, anything to escape her boring home and parents.
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As we awake to a new American president we can take a crumb of comfort by reflecting that however bad things may seem at the present it was by any measure worse at some stage in the past (take your pick). Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series of books and subsequent stage productions take as their starting point the fact that things were, once upon a real time, pretty grim for all concerned.
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Jane Austin’s masterpiece Pride and Prejudice adapted by Simon Reade comes gracefully waltzing in to Birmingham Rep’s main house . . . [and] relies on outstanding acting performances to carry it though, yet this seems to almost diminish some of the fairy tale like style to this story that fans of the book may crave. Yet as its own outright production it has brought this classic story to the new generation of Mr Darcy lovers.
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The history of the Christian religion has plenty of examples of intense piety, even fanaticism: Hermits in caves striving for union with god, monks dedicated to spiritual focus and anchoress nuns that lived in walled up cells and devoted themselves only to prayer. Trying to find something to explain life and deliver comfort doesn’t involve such drastic measures for most people, but it can lead to acute changes in their lives.
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Night Must Fall is, in some respects, similar to the last show I saw at the Everyman, When We Are Married. Both are very English plays written by established stalwarts of the British stage, both written in the mid-1930s and both plays were very popular in their day, especially in rep – and both were largely forgotten for forty years.
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The form of the evening was very much anecdotes about composers, royalty, or both, with appropriate musical interludes interspersed. Some were well known like Elgar (or Eljar, as Lanier spouts, disparagingly) and others like Eccles, less renowned. However, did you know that Eccles was Music Master for 35 years for no more than four monarchs!
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