The Light Burns Blue

Chorley Youth Theater’s production of The Light Burns Blue takes us back to the summer of 1917 and follows the story of the true life case of the Cottingley Fairies.  Set in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley we look at the story of Elsie Wright who with her younger cousin Frances Griffiths created five famous photographs claiming to show fairies at the bottom of the Wright family garden. On discovery of the photographs, word begins to spread about them, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle includes the photos in a magazine article and invites Elsie and Frances to a gala dinner in London. The play uses a back and forth narrative style as we are taken backwards and forwards from April to August 1917, we witness scenes from Elsie’s life before and after the photos were taken and particularly one scene which takes place in December 1916 that could have some baring as to why Elsie created her photographs. The play takes place in August 1917 and  looks at the tense meeting between the two characters at the centre of  the piece  which are Elsie Wright,  very movingly played by Charley Burke and the investigative journalist Winifred Douglas, played by Emma Heyes who portrayed Winifred’s conflict very well, she tries to expose Elsie as a fraud but gradually she begins to feel very frustrated with Elsie as she realizes there is more to the story than she first expected but she cannot get Elsie to admit it.

This was a serious piece of theatre from Chorley Youth Theatre where the Author of the play Silva Semerciyan looks at the value of artistic expression and also how much people cling to encouraging beliefs when coping with a world which is not a very nice place, a world deprived of opportunity, where families are decimated, due in this case to World War 1. With a predominately female cast and directed by Lucy Aspinall this was a very good interesting production with underlying themes which could easily have been lost in a less well directed piece. This was a large cast for any director to organize and all the actors looked well-rehearsed and appeared to know exactly what they were doing. The set was minimalistic and the scenes were set with the use of props and a TV screen which showed pictures appertaining to the story, the date and time of the action and news from the era, which along with the excellent costumes from Sandra Dickinson was just right for the productions. The pace of the play along with diction and clarity of words were excellent meaning the plot could be followed easily which was very important for the message of the piece. The large cast worked well together with no weak links producing some very interesting characters.  As well as the previously mentioned excellent performances from Charley and Emma, there were very good performances from Macy Bromilow as Frances Griffiths Elsie’s cousin and fellow conspirator, Lucy Manley as Polly Wright, Elise’s mother Declan Cowell as Arthur Wright Elsie’s father and Elise’s friends Loren Dougan (Vivie), Roslyn Dolman(Betsy), Hannah Palmer(Mags), Amber Hampson (Flossie). Anna Bolton (Janet) Megan Wray (Agatha) and Alice Charnley as Lillian Carter, all the actors performed very well and I would have liked to be able mention them all if it had been possible.

Congratulations to Lucy Aspinall Assistant Director Kira Brookfield and to all involved in this very good thought provoking production, it is good to see young people performing good meaningful drama and appear to be enjoying it.
 

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