Sweet Sorrow

Once again, SNADS took on, with Sweet Sorrow, the challenge of a play dealing with powerful emotions and a difficult subject, and once again they delivered a triumph of a production. Written by Sue Ashby, Sweet Sorrow is a local play, set in and around Sturminster Newton, looking at the turmoil of emotions felt by and demonstrated by a young family dealing with the death of the mother from cancer, and how they negotiate the feelings and process of grief and loss around it.

Directed with subtlety, sensitivity, ingenuity and creativity, it was one of the most moving plays I have seen in a very long time. It was bold, a challenge for the audience because it presented raw feelings and would no doubt have touched powerful emotions in many of the audience. Director, cast and everyone involved back stage and in front, rose to the challenge and succeeded magnificently in drawing the audience in, holding their engagement and taking them through the painful and cathartic sequence of scenes that told the story.

The cast was a small one and despite the wide stage the Director had maintained the intimacy of the script, which made the production all the more powerful. In a series of mostly short, but sometimes longer scenes, intense emotions of all sorts were realistically conveyed, interacting with each other, like chamber music. That meant a challenge for everyone - Director, stage and tech crew and actors - to maintain the pace and audience engagement. This was achieved partly through very clever, creative and impressive use of technology - in particular a large screen at the back of the stage onto which were projected, at various points throughout the play, images that reflected and enhanced what was being acted in front: mobile phone text message conversations; a panorama of Christchurch harbour; an image of the hospice, another of a park; a photo-montage reminiscence of Gemma engaged in various activities; photos of her garden changing with the seasons to show the passage of time; the rapid-fire phone texts were especially impressive, and indeed crucial to the telling of the story.

The pace and engagement were also held through quick, efficiently-handled scene changes and effective use of music, for example ‘Heroes’, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, ‘La Bamba’ (for a scene in Spain), ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘Paint it Black’ and ‘Mad World’ to set the scene, enhance the atmosphere and underscore the emotion. The lighting was also used to good effect. In scene 5, for example, there was an interesting light effect as Sky and Josh came in and kicked a ball around while Sky asked her brother how he felt about their mother; while Gemma and Jo talked on Studland Beach about their holiday and their future, the intimacy of the scene was enhanced by the narrow focus of light on them; a Christmas scene at their home, with Sky and Gemma on the sofa at night, with the Christmas tree lit up, was very powerful.

Above all, the pace and emotion were delivered though the excellent acting from all of the cast, all of whom, incidentally, demonstrated great ability at having learnt so many lines. Right from the strong opening, with Jo watching a football match on his phone, the acting was very natural and realistic.  Jo was absolutely stunning as the father, displaying a huge range of emotions with complete conviction and clarity for the audience. Gemma had a big challenge as the central character and the focus of so much of the emotion, and she handled in expertly and with subtlety; the scene in which she received her scan results was a particularly powerful one, and the scene with her sister Kate in the hospice, the two of them reminiscing and planning her funeral, was very moving indeed, thanks to the strong acting. Kate was very convincing in the role of the sister and aunt, for example when she was offering support to Sky, and the character of the woman whom Jo comes across at Sturminster Newton Mill was beautifully played. The interaction between the two of them was perfect.

Josh, the teenage son, was impressively portrayed, displaying a very convincing awkwardness in the first half and wholly believable in his grief-stricken state in the second half. Sky, his sister, gave a magnificent performance, with strong projection, powerful emotions clearly presented, an intensity, and nuanced expressions hinting at what might be going on underneath the surface. There was a particularly engaging and believable scene in which Sky came back home eager to tell her parents about something that happened at school, but wasn’t able to do so.

This production, like so many of SNADS’ productions, took the risk of presenting raw, challenging emotions; it also took risks with the physical staging, as when Sky and Josh kicked the football around the performance area or when Sky threw a sofa cushion with force across the stage at Josh. He caught it and threw it back, and it made a powerful and memorable moment.

A great strength of this production, a tribute both to the direction and to the acting, was that it presented to the audience fully rounded characters. In addition to the grief and pain there was humour, as when the children, towards the end, offered their father tips for dating. Grounded in the convincing performances, the play took the audience along a harrowing but uplifting journey with the family, and delivered, at the end, a very satisfactory ending. Congratulations to everyone involved.

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