Love All

Barton Players are a very well organised and supported village hall group who have punched their weight into the topflight of amateur groups. The reason in part is twofold, a very advanced backstage technical team, headed up by Keith Bowie and a very innovative playwright/Artistic Director, Keith Badham, who has over fifty plays to his name that have been performed all over the world. “Love All” is his latest offering and is presented by a cast of sixteen in a series of short sharp scenes, nineteen in the first half and twenty-two in the second, the plot of which is best summed up in Keith Badham’s own words:

“Love All is a bittersweet, funny and deeply moving exploration of love in all its forms: romantic love, familial love, friendship, longing, loss and forgiveness. At its heart lies the story of Adele, an elderly woman living with Alzheimer's disease, and her daughter Kate, who has become her primary carer. As Adele's memories begin to disappear, Kate desperately tries to preserve the stories and relationships that have shaped her mother's life, guiding her through fragments of the past that surface briefly before fading away again. Alongside Adele and Kate's story runs a quieter, more mysterious narrative. A curmudgeonly homeless man known only as "The Tramp" appears throughout the play, sitting mostly alone on a park bench and reflecting on his past. He is haunted by memories of childhood, family and feelings of abandonment. The Tramp is Adele's long-lost son. Estranged from his family for many years, he has returned with the intention of seeing his mother once more. Yet he is paralysed by fear, regret and uncertainty. Unsure whether he will be welcomed or rejected, he delays the reunion he has imagined for so long. While he struggles to summon the courage to reconnect, Adele's condition continues to deteriorate, and the possibility of reconciliation slips further away.”

The set designed by the two Keiths was divided into three sections, to stage front right was an alcove depicting a kitchen area with curtained window of the home of Adele and Kate with a table and two chairs and a second table against the side wall complete with normal kitchen ware including a microwave and basket of washing underneath. To front stage left was a second alcove with wooden park bench with a spindly branch of a tree with a few leaves, very reminiscent of the set for ‘Waiting for Godot’. In the centre of the rear wall were a series of shoebox size brown cardboard boxes cleverly arranged in a heart shape. Each was installed with a line of LED lights, which allowed each box to be lit individually during the show. Superb piece of technical innovation from Keith Bowie and his team.

Lighting by Keith Bowie was essential to the plot as each part of the stage was lit and plunged into darkness as required which was done with absolute precision especially as we worked our way through each short sharp scene with this large cast often quietly populating the stage without interfering with the current scene.  The piece-de-resistance has to be the last scene where the mother had died and the whole of the heart sign on the back wall was lit with the cross symbolising her grave lit in bright white light in front of it. Sound by Adam Bowie was never an issue and was crystal clear throughout. All extremely well done.

The entire cast were dressed in black, the men in black tops and long trousers and the ladies in black tops and mainly shorts. The one exception was the tramp, played by the playwright himself, who on top of his black trousers and top wore a scruffy jacket with hood covering an unkempt shoulder length wig, which together with the beard he had grown for the part took me a few moments to recognise him. Extremely effective!

Cleverly, apart from the Tramp played by Keith Badham himself, all the characters simply took the first names of the actors playing them for the many parts portrayed, which I have to say made a lot of sense and certainly made it much easier to follow the action. So simple but so clever, I’d not seen that done before.

The acting was engaging throughout and in a lot of the scenes incredibly poignant. It certainly wasn’t a comfortable play to watch in places, and we were definitely grateful for the comedic scenes, just to relieve the tension. The best were probably where the sexes swoped roles and we had for example, the girls acting in a laddish way, with a particularly funny scene where they were acting out lads using a urinal, or another scene where they were waking up after a heavy night on the booze and the room smelled of fart!   

There were some extremely lengthy and poignant monologues mostly in the second Act.  I’m Dead To You (Adele), Little Rays (John) and I love being Alone (Derryanne) amongst many particularly stood out and were brilliantly delivered. The use of the ugly masked figures in the gloom at the rear of the stage during the slow deterioration of Adele, or the reflections of The Tramp on the bench added a surreal darkness to the action. Still not quite sure I understood their entire purpose.

I won’t pretend I understood it all, far from it, but it certainly made food for thought to show what a minefield love is. Some of it worked and some of it I’m still trying to fathom out and I think the audience, although fully engaged were a mix of slightly shell shocked and also slightly perplexed at what they had just seen.

Keith Badham is a master at thinking out of the box and this was certainly way out there a lot of the time, but his cast had certainly put in the hard work putting his take on love across to the audience. So well done indeed to: John Murphy, Gill George, Clare Coffey, Sam Webster, Mick George, Kevin Fitzgerald, Alex Macdonald, Tallulah Smith, Rebecca Louise Smith, Rachel Bowie, Derryanne Blunt, Lesley Jorgensen, Ron Knight, Adele Tebb, Kate Ruusuvuori and the playwright himself, Keith Badham.  This one will be pondered over for some time to come.

And finally, many thanks to the FOH staff who always look after us so well.

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