Theatre Review
Speed the Plough
Theatre Royal, Bury St. Edmunds
“Odds dickens and daizeys! Zoo it be, zure enow!” Ah, they knew how to write dialogue in early 19th century plays.
This was another script-in-hand session aimed at Restoring the Repertoire. Thus the theatre has uncovered the plays that would have been performed there in the early years.
The actors have not seen the script until that morning, so we are privileged to see the rehearsal process at an early point.
All takes place on the stage, with the audience for once upstaging the actors, who speak into microphones as though it was a radio recording.
Any production gains but also loses something as it heads to performance. When Gielgud directed Richard Burton as Hamlet he asked the actors to try and retain the feeling of the run-through.
After that the show becomes ossified by costumes, make-up and the real props. At Bury they have caught the early freshness, the first moments of creation, but with an audience as well.
The plays can seem funny old stuff, with comic yokels, aristocrats with secrets, a ploughboy who turns out to be nobly born, a fire at the castle; but they are of their time.
The actors, directed by Tim Welton, perform with their customary verve and energy, firing your imagination for a full production.
There will be further script-in-hand presentations on 7 March and 18 April.
Basil Abbott