A Dulditch Angel

Eastern Angles Theatre Company at The Cut, Halesworth

Review published in the Eastern Daily Press, 29 September 2005

A Dulditch Angel

The latest show by Eastern Angles has been launched on its tour of venues across our region. And a gripping tour-de-force it is.

Five talented and versatile cast weave the fabric of a rural community struggling, loving, marrying and dying.

Told from the stories of Mary Mann, it is set as the 19th century gives way to the 20th. However, the performance style gives it a timeless, haunting resonance with all English life.

Few may have heard of Mary Mann – but one of her stories of love between a gamekeeper and an educated woman was pilfered by DH Lawrence and became Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Eastern Angles are doing a service bringing these darkly humorous tales to a wider audience.

The experiment of the rector hoeing turnips for a week and forcing his household to survive on 11 shillings wages is the central yarn. But skilled acting, tight writing and immaculate direction makes this a total taste of all life.

The comedy slides from visual to verbal, incorporating mime, direct address and physical theatre.

The set is a square of parquet that serves as room and village. It’s a delight and a privilege to spend a couple of hours sharing that world and the vagaries of our history and our present with such absorbing characters. Such wonderful performers.