New Forest Players

Reviewed by: Stuart Ardern on Saturday 29 October 2011
Venue: Ballard School, New Milton
Type of Production: Play
Producer/Director: Paul Bailey
Musical Director:
Choreographer:

Show Report

Willy Russell’s script is more familar in its musical incarnation (not currently available to amateur groups). The play takes the starting point of the musical and gets to the same ending point via a slightly different route. Along the way, it plays up the superstition - the part of the plot with which I am least comfortable, just becuse the culture is alien to me: I have never come across anyone who is superstitious to that degree. The set did a neat job of contrasting the damp walls of a neglected council house with the clean lines of a spacious private home. For a piece with such a dark ending, and grim background, there’s a tremendous amount of fun on the way - most of it from Mickey, Eddie and Linda (excellent performances from Adam Jessop, Matthew Traher and Shannon Fisher) growing from seven-year-olds to adults. Along the way, there were imaginary games, the fun of learning rude words (Mikey learns them from his older brother; Eddie looks them up in a dictionary), and the awkwardness of teenage romance. After that, there’s a growing estrangement between the boys - Eddie off to university and Mickey struggling to work in a city hit hard by a recession. Sarah Haberfield did a great job of capturing all of Mrs Johnston’s moods as well as aging for the second act, whilst Fiona Sinclair, as Eddie’s adoptive mother, went from pushy but nervy through to a breakdown. Director Paul Baiely brought a suitable air of fatalistic menace to the narrator’s role, ably assisted by Carla Murray.