'The Love of the Nightingale' at Bristol Old Vic

Bristol Old Vic Young Company - photo by Jack Offord

While the famous Bristol Old Vic building on King Street is undergoing extensive renovations, the team is using the opportunity to take the shows that would have been in their (currently out of action) Studio on walkabout to other venues in the city. 

As such, this production of The Love Of The Nightingale from Bristol Old Vic's Young Company is being performed in the Bristol Bierkeller on All Saints Street (which claims to be Bristol's oldest nightclub and, since 2012, has also functioned as a theatre as well as a live music venue). It's charmingly German retro in here as the name suggests: all low artexed ceilings, cavelike arches, tiled floor and long benches. 

All in all, it seems the perfect location for the Young Company to perform their production of Timberlake Wertenbaker's play The Love Of The Nightingale, which here is directed by Miranda Cromwell, after having first been written for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. The play is a contemporary and feminist re-telling of the ancient Greek myth of the rape of Philomele by her brother-in-law Tereus, and the silencing of women in the face of gender power struggles. Despite this obviously being based on a centuries old tale, the themes sadly still ring very true today. 

Bristol Old Vic Young Company - photo by Jack Offord

(Please note: the plot summary below contains a few spoilers.)

Athens is at war with Thebes over land. And after the king of Thrace, Tereus (Toby Robertshaw, playing a most unenviable role with conviction), steps in to help, he takes the king of Athens' daughter Procne (Hannah Hecheverria) as his bride. In doing so, he rips Procne away from her beloved younger sister Philomele (Imogen Downes) and the rest of her family, and takes Procne all the way back to Thrace with him where she must learn to live with her loneliness, as well as her new role as a mother to their son Itys (Jacob Rayner Blair). 

After five years, Tereus agrees to return to Athens to bring Philomele to make Procne happy. While on the return voyage, all of Tereus' soliders and Philomele's chaperone Niobe (Alexandra Wollacott) can sense the danger looming as a result of Tereus' strong sexual attraction to the innocent Philomele - which ultimately leads to him raping her in a truly shocking scene (while the audience obviously doesn't see anything graphic, the screams of Philomele are genuinely haunting). 

What ensues is Tereus telling each sister that the other has died, and when an already enraged Philomele discovers the lie she finds the strength to rant at Tereus about what a small, cowardly, pathetic man he is... only to be silenced in the most brutal way. An act that ultimately leads to his own downfall.

Bristol Old Vic Young Company - photo by Jack Offord

This a brave, no-holds-barred performance from the Bristol Old Vic's Young Company, which has a long tradition of not shying away from tough topics. As Philomele, Imogen Downes shows herself to be an actor really worth keeping your eyes open for - her performance was strong, impressive and powerful. Given everything that Philomele endures, this wasn't a role that just anyone could have carried off, but Downes more than does the part justice. 

However, I did feel the production would have benefitted from a little trimming. The slightly confusing actions of the first half could have been summed up in a much shorter period, as it is in the second half of the performance where The Love Of The Nightingale really comes into its own in a much tighter script.  

Sensitively handling issues such as rape, consent, revenge and gender struggles is no small ask, but in this production director Miranda Cromwell has found a way to convincingly put across how relevant and important all of these are. The way the sisters are treated as commodities, the lack of attention paid by the male characters to the wishes or opinions of any of the women, the apparent irrelevance of consent to the powerful men... all of these issues are addressed with care and consideration here. 

So bravo to the Young Company for a strong and innovative piece of feminist theatre. 


The Love Of The Nightingale is performed at Bristol Bierkeller until 13 January. Click here for more information and to buy tickets. Please note, the Bierkeller is a cash-only venue.

'The Snow Queen' at Bristol Old Vic

Photo: Mark Douet

Steampunk cannibals, animatronic aristocracy and flower power. These are just a few of the styles in the Bristol Old Vic’s slightly sinister new show for winter 2016.

Inspired by the Hans Christian Anderson tale of the same name, The Snow Queen (directed by Lee Lyford) is set in an idyllic village where neighbouring children Kai and Gerda have grown up side by side to become the very best of friends, with their hearts as pure as the whitest snow.

But when the tranquility of the village is rocked by the devastating disappearance of child after child, Kai and Gerda are the last two remaining… and the villagers realise that the legend of the wicked Snow Queen (Gwyneth Herbert) - who feeds off the souls of naughty children - might be true after all. So when Kai (Steven Roberts) ultimately falls under the Snow Queen’s spell, Gerda (Emily Burnett) must set out on an adventure to find her friend and bring him home.

The inspired stage design by Tom Rogers is just fantastic - an imaginative and ever-changing combination of rural villages, spiky ice castles, psychedelic florals and more. And the use of projections (both pre-filmed and live) was delightful and effective. Continuing the trend for incorporating the onstage musicians as part of the show, composer Gwyneth Herbert was brilliant as a multi-instrumentalist, conductor and the commanding voice of the Snow Queen.

However, an absolute highlight was a song by a sad reindeer (Dylan Wood) who had lived his whole life in captivity, performed pitch perfectly in the style of The Smiths… although, slightly, depressingly, perhaps the inclusion of The Smiths in a Christmas family show is a nod to the fact that most people of our age are now old enough to be parents. Argh, I suddenly feel very grown up! But it was delivered magnificently and had me in stitches. Bravo.

Photo: Mark Douet

I loved the animatronic Snow Queen, I really did. As a terrifying and monstrous creation, the mammoth puppet (maybe 9ft tall?) was extremely effective. With a face like an alien, white spikes jutting out all over her and gaping holes through her huge ghostly rib cage, in silhouette she was even more frightening than when revealed. Fantastic! And bravo to her various puppet masters who controlled her excellently throughout, as well as designer Marc Parrett.

Another delight were the goblin scientists who worked the wicked Snow Queen’s magic for her… with the lead scientist Dr Boffin (Joanna Holden) inventing all kinds of gadgets to make the Snow Queen even more villainous. Dr Boffin’s sidekick Apprentice (Dylan Wood again) was the perfect foil for her scatty professor schtick. And my scientist friend in the audience reliably informed me that this was an exact recreation of the kind of shenanigans scientists get up to in the lab all day. Who am I to doubt this?

Although a little frightening in places for junior audience members (it may contain scenes of what DVDs euphemistically call “mild peril”), The Snow Queen is yet another Bristol Old Vic triumph. The annual Christmas show from this favourite theatre has become a highlight on the cultural calendar, but after the soaring heights of Swallows & Amazons and Peter Pan it has taken a few years for them to produce something good enough to match. While The Snow Queen is not quite up there with the dizzy heights of Peter Pan (surely the finest Christmas production ever?), it is the Bristol Old Vic’s strongest Christmas show for several years. Enjoy!

The Snow Queen is performed at Bristol Old Vic until January 15, 2017. For more information and to book tickets, please click here.

'The Day Before Yesterday' - Noel Streatfeild

While waiting to get some keys cut in the market a few weeks ago, I had a rummage around the secondhand book stall and immediately my hand fell upon a lovely green hardback boasting the name of Noel Streatfield. Well known to many as the author of Ballet Shoes and all the subsequent spin-offs, Streatfield is a much-cherished writer whom many women of my age hold a very soft spot for. 

The Day Before Yesterday is a fantastic idea and an even more fantastic concept. Published in the 1950s, Streatfield realised that society was changing so fast that it needed to be recorded and it needed to be recorded by the people who had lived through those times. So with a focus on the period 50 years prior to publication, she asked all manner of people to share their stories of what life was like for them. And the ensuing book is presented at all stages of a girl's life, and crossing the class boundaries - for it is clearly a female reader for whom this book is intended. 

So we start with a Victorian nursery nurse, and move on to a school teacher, and a barely-teenage housemaid. We learn about the changes in transport, as the granddaughter of a coach king shares how her grandfather's empire grew from a few horse-drawn coaches to a fleet of thousands of motorised omnibuses that monopolised the London transport system. We heard first-hand from a suffragette on the frontline, in what is possibly my favourite segment - which is all the more poignant because it is not written by a 'famous' suffragette, but by a woman whose contributions and achievements to the women's rights cause might well otherwise be forgotten. 

This is a truly delightful book. A wonderful snapshot into the history of a long-gone ages that really wasn't so very long ago. As an added curiosity, the book I bought had originally been a school prize from a fee-paying girls' school in Bristol, won by a pupil in 1956. I wonder what happened to the woman who won this book and if she felt as inspired by it as I did, 60 years later? 

'Madame Solario' by Gladys Huntingdon

This feels like an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ moment. An admission of my own failure and confirmation that surely I’m missing something crucial if I could but see it. Because I’m sorry, but I really couldn’t get on with Madame Solario, which is one of the three new Persephone Books for the autumn.

I’m certain this this must be a failing with me and not the book. It must be. Because trying to prove myself wrong, I scoured the internet and read other reviews of Madame Solario that were unanimous in their love of the book, reverential about the writing and which embraced the characters completely. So why did I find it such a slog?

Originally published anonymously in 1956, Madame Solario caused quite a stir in its day with its accounts of unashamed love in a hedonistic summer at Lake Como in 1906. By the time of a 1980s reprint that revealed the author to be American writer Gladys Huntingdon, Madame Solario was accepted as a little-known but well-regarded literary triumph.

All of the ingredients were there for me to enjoy Madame Solario as much as everyone else seems to. Set in glorious Italy at the end of a turn-of-the-century summer, as the over-entitled upper-middle-classes swan about with a mixture of disregard and unrequited love for one another. Fabulous! What’s not to enjoy?!

But it just didn’t work for me. It took such a long time for anything to happen, and then an even longer time for anything else to happen. There were too many characters to try and distinguish from one another in the early chapters that I kept having to skim backwards to refresh my memory as to who they were. I found it impossible to care about any of the main characters, once I’d worked out who they were, and whether they found the happiness they felt they were entitled to. Ultimately it became a chore to read… and when there are so many books in the world that you’ll simply never have time to read, it feels wrong to spend time on a book you are not enjoying.

Of course, it is impossible for everyone to like a book, no matter how good it is. It’s all a matter of personal taste. And I feel I have missed something significant by not falling in love with Madame Solario the way that reviewers such as this one and all these have. So perhaps this will be a book I return to in a few years with fresh eyes and see anew. Here’s hoping.