One Night In November

Dark, moving, full of foreboding, this play makes us relive tales of wartime experiences told to us by our parents.  One Night in November is the most successful new play ever produced at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, and has been seen widely in Britain and North America. A wartime love story, but no Brief Encounter this. A different dilemma involved, a much more harrowing one.

With scene-setting black and white photos or film clips projected onto the backdrop – the railway station, Coventry streets, factory scenes, bomber squadrons flying over, the feeling of impending horrors was increased. The set itself was often split into two parts – Katie’s home and Michael’s office at Bletchley. The sight of the destroyed staircase in Katie’s house after the bombing raid was truly shocking.

Gilly Fick discovered this play, and took on the challenge of directing it with great energy and sensitivity. We really were forced to relive the deprivations and the ‘normality’ of wartime, with its black-out, the importance of the radio, the sense of foreboding, yet not of constant fear – people just got on with their lives, at work, at home, going out, travelling around, getting accustomed to the air raid sirens, and sheltering under tables, or under the stairs. The production brought this over very well, I thought.

The cast were great. Katie’s mum, Meg, played by Barbara Tresidder, exuded kindness and warmth, and a benign tolerance of her husband’s political rants. Jack Stanley, played by Jonathan Arundel, was the fiery shop steward, and yet fond father, a sceptical one too, when it came to Katie’s new boyfriend, Michael, who would never say where he worked or what he did.  Ally Murphy, who played Katie’s sister Joan, gave a fine performance in a role which was quite a challenge to play, I am sure.  Injured in the bombing raid, she realises that her mother lies dead beside her, and is then violently raped.  Eddie Woolrich, who played Ken Widdows, neighbour and ARP warden, was his reliably good self.

At Bletchley, Michael’s flirty colleague, Sheila, played with aplomb by Cheryl Malam, succeeded in embarrassing the much younger Michael with her constant ‘advances’.

So now to our young couple, Katie and Michael. Both Sarah Martin and James Martin played their roles to perfection, with just the right amount of shyness, tentative excitement, embarrassment (in the family scenes), and quiet delight and joy in their burgeoning relationship that one would expect in a story set in the 1940s – different times, those.

Michael’s great dilemma – to warn about the raid to save the family, or to keep silent as his role at Bletchley demanded, in order to prevent knowledge of the breaking of the German codes reaching Germany, (and we know this was so vital in shortening the war considerably), was etched on his face, the mental torture was clear to see. Great casting, Gilly Fick!

At the end of this moving play, as the cast, clutching candles, emerged from the shadows to take their bows, there was no immediate burst of applause.  For just a few seconds, the audience were too moved, too deep in thought, to clap.  A sure sign of a great piece of theatre.

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