THE LONG WAY HOME

Eastern Angles at Brentwood Theatre

26.02.10

Mika Handley's compact set – all woodland shapes and tree-derived dyes – fits snugly into the intimate Brentwood auditorium.

On it, four players act out an oft-told story; the two narrators [James Bolt and Jumaan Short]assuming almost god-like powers as they intervene to move the action on, providing key props and all the supporting characters.

Charles Way's enthralling drama tells of Old Mother [Susan McGoun], black clad and wise, “coming down the other side of the hill of life”, who sets off through woods and mountains to her shoreland home. Just outside her village, she adopts a handsome enfant sauvage [Theo Devaney], tends and tames him, and takes him with her on the journey. She gives him the gift of language {“What have I let myself in for ?”] and a name, Andreas.

They meet a carpenter and his wife, sick with grief for their boy, lost in the forest. But they fail to wrest Andreas from her. Later, freedom fighters in the mountains. They too want her boy for their own. At last they find her village by the sea, and she is able to take her last walk along the shore.

The folk-poetical language of the story is enhanced by Naomi Jones's magical staging. The toy village – wooden houses and towers – is all the furniture. The lighting is simple but evocative. The snatches of music – the sausage lullaby, the drunken dance – help the atmosphere. And there are puppets [Polly Beestone]. Especially telling are the “bones and dust” of Old Mother's late husband [ Old Father ? ], with a wine jar for a head, and the little wooden ghost of a boy, the carpenter's son Petrus.

Occasionally in the second half, the narrative threatened to get bogged down in theology and philosophy, but the mythic intensity of the story was so powerful that it carried us through to the inevitable end. Like all the best tales, it will resonate long after the storytellers have moved on.

Eastern Angles are taking The Long Way Home around the region until May 22. It comes to Chelmsford's Cramphorn Theatre on April 29.

Jim Hutchon saw the show for the Brentwood Weekly News...

Charles Way wrote Eastern Angles’ latest rural touring production, involving a simple rites of passage story which packs a powerful universal punch. An old Greek widow seeks to return from her forest home to her seashore family village across the mountains. She picks up an injured boy-dog in the forest, and bathes his wounds to start a lasting friendship. They support each other and bicker their way over fields and mountain passes to reach the sea and the strange adventures they encounter en-route strengthen their bond while he develops into manhood under her guidance.

Theo Devaney is the boy-dog who pulled off a perfect parabola of a transition from animal to human, wholly believable as both, and able to communicate without speech. The Old Mother was Susan McGoun, who was convincing as the patient, uncomplaining old widow. A pair of storytellers/puppet masters, James Bolt and Jumaan Short play, in turn, a forest worker and his childless wife, a chauvinist farmer and his seductress wife, and a pair of bandits in their mountain hideaway, all intent on exploiting the boy for their own ends.

The whole Greek island of forests, villages, fields, mountains and seashore is convincingly contained on a 4 metre diameter circle, so that it will fit all the varied rural venues of a typical Eastern Angles’ tour. And the players are backed up by Polly Beestone’s superb, simple puppets, principally the ghost of the old mother’s husband – made of a wine jug and some old tatters - who continues to harass her from beyond the grave.

This is an evening of superb theatre, and will continue to play across East Anglia until 22nd May. Check out their website for locations and dates.