BENTWATER ROADS

for The Public Reviews

Eastern Angles 
at the Hush House, Bentwaters

01.07.10

“There's an older story here, and we have a share in it.”

'Here' seems like the middle of nowhere, acres of airbase under vast Suffolk skies, the weeds and the wild flowers trying to move in since the Americans went home.

The Hush House, a found space built to test jet engines, is the site for Tony Ramsey's intriguing play, and its inspiration, too.

He imagines four historical layers, from Pagan times through the Middle Ages and the Cold War to the present day. They are porous layers, though, and ghosts, living and dead, haunt the bend in the river that was a special place to all these peoples.

The narrative revolves around Charlie, a restless, rootless nomad, brought back to Rose Cottage by a funeral and a house sale. Not a particularly likeable or easy character, played with honest intensity by Nadia Morgan.

The other actors all take roles across the Ages – so Mark Knightley is both Jez, Charlie's friend and minder, and the young Pagan Crotus who takes pottery to market in Camulodunum and “makes a wonder of a common road”. Some idea of the complexity of the resonances: Caitlin Thorburn plays Charlie as a child, Crotus's sacrificial virgin girlfriend, bathing her mutilated wrists in the stream, and a geriatric nurse, washing her hands in the same water ...

Sally Ann Burnett was her mother, and the determined widow who, a millennium on, sees the church tower built to remember her husband – one of a number of missing fathers in the piece. The church still stands in isolation just outside the perimeter fence. I loved Pamela Buchner's heartless actress, distant mother to Charlie. Peter Sowerbutts was more comfortable with the mysterious Mel than with the American Commander, while Richard Sandells was another enigmatic father figure, and the ghost of an airman's father in a video link. Projection was used effectively here, with the roof of Charlie's iconic camper van serving as one of the screens.

Daniel Copeland was excellent value in two of the most interesting roles – the pompous medieval cleric and estate agent Andrew who, in what is perhaps a thread too far, is also a detectorist and UFO buff.

Close Encounters brought occasionally to mind by the impressive tunnel, too, which is the main feature of the stage, together with some metallic trees, real water in troughs, and some more realistic bits and pieces for the cottage and the airbase.

Actors from the community – an idea that has worked well for Colchester Mercury, too – were the Watchers, Ancient Britons for whom this place had a special significance, and who have never really left it … There was a lovely moment when two girls were puzzling over the books packed up for house clearance, understanding nothing of their import or purpose.

Roger Eno's atmospheric music, and some deafening realistic jet engine sounds, helped us switch back and forth between the eras. This is a strong piece, very much in the Eastern Angles tradition, and of course could tour anywhere. Except that the spirit of place is very strong, and there was a real sense that we, together with the Watchers, were witnessing events that had marked this spot, leaving echoes for us to pick up in the Hush House, and ponder as we walked out through the hangar doors to stand for a moment beneath those same skies.

My old friend and mentor Jon Richards was at a matinée in the Hush House:

Ever been to the Roman theatre at Ephesus? You make your way past the occasional fallen stone, stand on the wide stage and look out at the semi-circle of stone seats ranged in front of you. As you look up at the furthest step you can’t help but want to declaim, fill the space with sound, with energy. The Hush House has the same effect. Walk in through those enormous sliding doors, face that maw of a tunnel and the space demands that you fill it with sound, light, the human condition. OK – it’s on the outer edges of civilisation, not the most convenient of venues to fill, but one can fully appreciate why Eastern Angles have returned to such an atmospheric site.

After a long gestation Tony Ramsay’s Bentwater Roads arrives at the Hush House in an inventive and commanding production by Ivan Cutting. Ramsay’s play envisages events that might have happened in this remote area of the kingdom (not much electricity hereabouts until the mid-sixties…) at four periods of our history: the present, the Cold War, Medieval Suffolk and pagan times. The play hangs on Charlie’s (Charlotte’s) return to Rose Cottage, the house in which she grew up with her actress mother. Mum Josephine has recently died. Charlie, trailing an orange VW camper van and boyfriend Jez, comes to claim her inheritance and move on. Except it isn’t that simple. Charlie and her mother have never understood one another. And there’s the problem of her father who she believes long dead but isn’t and much of the action is about coming to terms with that.

Echoes from the past reverberate in each of the time scales which flow very neatly and mostly convincingly into one another. There are excellent performances from nine named actors and, for the first time, a sixteen-strong chorus of volunteers who people the pagan and medieval sections of the drama. There’s some atmospheric smoke in that there tunnel, some thrilling sound effects as a jet fighter swoops through the skies, and the venue permits an actual VW van to be rolled in and its raised white roof to serve as a screen for some of the appropriately used video action.

Nadia Morgan is an affecting Charlie. One sympathises with her although many of her problems seem self-inflicted. She seems to have been singularly uninquisitive about her father as a child. When her schizophrenic father rises up from his wheelchair to confront her is a chilling moment, particularly helped by the mesmeric performance of Richard Sandells. Daniel Copeland is that rare character, a sympathetic estate agent, but is also a nicely slimy Father Tawney, cleverly out-manoeuvered by a confident Sally Ann Burnett as Mrs Middleton during the building of the local church tower – the first to be built of corraline stone.

Mark Knightley plays boyfriend Jez and catches his easy-going nature; he’s much more intense and dramatic as the most enlightened pagan Crotus who wants to remove his ladylove from the clutches of the religious mania engulfing locals during a famine. Caitlin Thorburn is that lady and brings a simple dignity to the role. I liked Peter Sowerbutts playing a no-nonsense US commanding officer and the enigmatic friend of Charlie’s Mum.

Keith Baker’s design was notable – the stylised metal trees providing an excellent backdrop to this multi-media production. Real water, a deep black tunnel, the simplest of props, imaginative lighting and an enthusiastic chorus, there was much to enjoy in this piece that must have been a very demanding production. Eastern Angles again demonstrate their willingness to go beyond what is the usual fare of many local theatres. Let’s hope that the inevitable cuts that the government is proposing fall elsewhere.