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Author
Richard Bean
Director
Wilson Milam
Designer
Dick Bird
Lighting
Designer
Paul Keogan
Sound
Designer
Gareth Fry
William
Matthew Dunster
Albert
Gareth Farr
Laura
Sian Brooke
Maudie
Jane Hizlegrove
Lord
Primrose Agar
Dickon Tyrrell
Titch
Adrian Hood
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Royal
Court
Jerwood Theatre Downstairs
02
Sep - 01 Oct 2005 |
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This
is a very funny play. Critics
are supposed to favour the
slight West End production
now, the quick skit that leaves
plenty of time for three courses
at J Sheekey's after the curtain
falls. A phenomenon widely
thought to explain the enduring
success of Art, which gallops
along at a slim 80 minutes.
Perhaps nobody mentioned this
to Richard Bean, whose new
play Harvest weighs in at
a positively Shakespearean
3 hours and 10 minutes, all
set in single kitchen over
most of a century. Unlike
Shakespeare's plays however,
Bean's is about pig farming
and thankfully there are more
jokes.
Harvest
traces the history of one
North Yorkshire farming family
from 1914 to 2006. In seven
scenes through ninety years
it takes in a birth, an attempted
rape, two fatal shootings,
much class rivalry, one grope
under the kitchen table and
a lot of one liners. The play
opens with two brothers, William
(Matthew Dunster) and Albert
(Gareth Farr) arguing about
who should go to war and who
should stay home to mind the
farm. William wins, heads
for the trenches and returns
in the next scene minus his
legs, but determined to turn
the farm over to pigs. It
takes four scenes and forty-four
years but he finally gets
his way.
Whether they like it or not
the audience learn a lot about
farming. Like Richard Bean's
excellent earlier work Toast,
set in a bread factory, there
is a nostalgia for the twentieth
century working man that pervades
Harvest
. It
skirts quite close, but the
humour and humanity of the
work and great performances
from a 12 strong cast manage
to pull it back from the brink
of sentimentality and polemic.
Matthew Dunster's fabulous
portrayal of William particularly
stands out. He is bitter but
kind, funny but brutal and
with perfect timing makes
fine use of many of the best
lines in the play. Dickon
Tyrell plays an eccentric
Marquis of Bath-type aristocrat
with relish and Sian Brooke
plays the farm yard niece,
practically popping with youth
and sex. Titch, a six foot
seven-inch pig-man, long haired,
dour and slightly deranged
is fabulous. When he explains
the charm that pigs hold over
him, "They're are clever
but not that clever. Just
enough to mek it interesting
but not enough to get yer
worried", it seems to
stand as a motif for the play:
You learn a bit, you laugh
a lot but despite the underlying
political sentiment, Harvest
never challenges the way you
feel about life. It is a good
night out, a thoroughly enjoyable
plough through a century of
farming life with some great
performances. It feels refreshing
for its unfashionable choice
of subject matter, and reassuring
for its joy in life and the
assuredness with which the
director, William Milam directs
the cast. It is for this that
on the press night, despite
its length, a theatre full
of hungry critics clapped
whole heartedly, many with
their hands held over their
heads.
Charlie Taylor |
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