Canterbury Tales'

A highlight of the Taunton Dene Calendar is always the Thespians tour of local venues (usually beautiful ones) to engage and entertain local patrons with often classical or lesser known drama. This year the venue NODA decided to visit was the beautiful Cleeve Abbey to see some of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales brought back to life in a very fitting setting. Tales were interlinked by action led by  a playwright /story teller who engaged the company in a storytelling contest and we could be led to believe this was Chaucer himself and this worked well to knit the mayhem together

The Wife of Bath’s Tale

The Wife of Bath a saucy minx was beautifully portrayed with just the right amount of bawdiness and wit, her vocal tone and presentation was just right. The story was told with clarity and there were numerous highlights including the interviews of the ‘ladies’ which was great fun.

The Millers Tale

This was not quite as clear in its telling as there was not as much confidence in the language but it moved along with moderate speed and caused some giggles amongst the audience.

The Reeves’s Tale

The delivery of this piece was well timed, but again there were some glitches in the language. This was a story containing a lot of sexual tensions etc. and this was shown cleverly and simply without too much graphic detail. The use of props really helped in this piece and moved the story and comedy along nicely.

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Visually this tale was a highlight Chanticleer, Pertelote and the other hens all looked fabulous and the physical movement of the little hens on their perches was just great. The company seemed to be having a fun time with this piece and obviously had discussed and rehearsed the movements of many a broody hen while rehearsing.

The final inter-tale concluded that our host was none other than ‘Harry Bailey’ and he asked if anyone had heard of his play ‘The taming of the Vole’!!! All very light hearted until we finally did have Mr Chaucer presented to us ……

Costumes were all thoughtfully created presenting the 14th Century with a touch of the present day. The ambiance perfect but although necessary the painted scenery pieces were not quite in keeping in this venue.

The weather was on our side and a fun night was had by all …well toured everyone.

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