I Thought I Heard a Rustling

It was wonderful to see this Alan Plater play portrayed by such a talented cast. It was well directed and presented and the cast really worked as a team. Pauses in dialogue often portray much more than the spoken word but they need facial expressions and body language to support them and all the cast were impressive in this aspect. It is difficult sometimes to present different scenes in a relatively small working area but the director used her imagination to good effect to ensure that we knew we were watching the action in two separate buildings, so that was well thought out.

Most of the interplay between characters centres on Ellen (Denise Baker), librarian in the small branch library and Bill (Ian Davies) who everyone thinks is the newly appointed writer in residence. It was interesting to watch them develop their characters as they find out more about each other. Bill was appointed mainly by Councillor Graham (Lin Neale) and once again the change in character was well done when she discovers that she has been conned. It was almost like a ‘running gag’ as every time the Councillor’s name was mentioned she was given her full title in relation to her position on the library subcommittee. I am sure that all the audience felt sorry for Nutley (Stefan Dufaye) as he was also conned and finally deflated by Bill’s assessment of the book he was writing. This was even more poignant when we discovered that he had unsuccessfully applied for the ‘Writer in Residence’ post. We went through all the emotions with him on his journey. Once again, the character development was excellent. Then there was poor old Bernard (Maurice Allden) who only came to measure up the room sizes. He got pushed around when he was in the way and bumbled along without a care in the world. This was another fine character portrayal. Costumes, set, props and lighting were all very good and supported the performance perfectly. My only small grouse was that when a customer came into the library it sounded as though someone had fallen over in the wings.

Congratulations to everyone involved for an excellent evening’s entertainment!

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