As You Like It & Blue Remembered Hills

Publicity #1: Blue Remembered Hills & As You Like It
Publication: Words & Music
Publication Data: Issue 111 – July/August 2004
Text Header: Double-first for Southwick
Text: Content

Southwick-based Wick Theatre Company are taking on an unusual challenge in September, running two different plays alternately, for a fortnight, in true repertory style.

The plays are Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ and Denis Potter’s ‘Blue Remembered Hills’. They are quite different in content – for example, the Potter play has the fascinating device of adults playing the parts of seven-year-olds. But both are set in a forest – Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden and Potter’s Forest of Dean. So the interior of Southwick’s historic Barn Theatre will become an atmospheric woodland set.

Directing duties are being shared by Bob Ryder and Patricia Lyne, each bringing a long track record of drama successes in East and West Sussex. Their shared team of actors and technical crew will perform the plays alternate nights, with two Saturdays when audiences can see one play at an afternoon matinee and the other in the evening.

The twin productions run from 8th to 18th September. Further details from the box office 01273 597094

Publicity #2: Blue Remembered Hills & As You Like It
Publication: West Sussex Gazette
Publication Data: unknown
Text Header: Forest plays in repertory first for Wick
Text: Content

There’ll be a double helping of entertainment down at the Barn this September when Wick Theatre Company presents its very first repertory season.

Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Blue Remembered Hills by Denis Potter will be running alternatively over a two-week period.

Wick spokeswoman Rosemary Bouchy said: “Although completely different, both plays take place in a forest, so the Barn will be turned into an atmospheric woodland glade, with performances entirely in the round. This is open-air theatre with all the comforts of the great indoors!”

As You Like It is set in the Forest of Arden, where the audience will follow the fortunes of the feisty Rosalind and her lover Orlando. Rosalind and her cousin Celia have taken refuge there with Rosalind’s father the old Duke, who has been supplanted by his wicked brother Frederick. A collection of charismatic characters, courtiers, shepherds and country-folk, plus so merry music and dancing, help the story to a happy ending.

An experienced cast includes four newcomers to the Barn – Leila Leam playing Rosalind, Greg Robinson as Orlando, Nick Richmond as Silvius and Nikki Dunsford as the camp Monsieur Le Boo.

Blue Remembered Hills first appeared on BBC TV in 1979. It features adult actors all transformed into seven-year-old children, and tells the tale of their hair-raising adventures in the Forest of Dean during one summer afternoon in 1943.

As kids do, four little boys – Peter, Willie, Raymond and John – fight, climb trees, and argue. Meanwhile two small girls, Angela and Audrey, with doll and pram, play house with Donald, a poor battered child with a passion for matches. They meet up with the boys and play soon gets rough. Suddenly the siren goes off in the nearby prisoner-of-war camp to warn of an escape.

David Peaty is Peter, Willie is played by Mark Best, John by John Garland and Raymond by Nick Richmond. Judith Berrill plays Angela and Katie Brownings is Audrey.

In the repertory style, they will also be performing in As You Like It. The plays will be directed by Bob Ryder and Pat Lyne, each with a long track record of drama successes. They, too, will both be making surprise appearances in both productions.

The Rep Fortnight at the Barn Theatre, Southwick Street, Southwick starts on Friday evening September 10 with As You Like It in the evening. On Saturday September 11 there’ll be a matinee performance of Blue Remembered Hills, with As You Like It in the evening.

The Potter play will then be performed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening and Shakespeare on Tuesday and Thursday evening. On Saturday September 18 the season ends with a matinee of Blue Remembered Hills and As You Like It in the evening.

Matinees start at 2.30pm, evening at 7.45pm. Tickets are £7 from the Barn Box Office on 01273 597094.

If you see both plays on one Saturday – this will cost £10 for the two performances.

Publicity #3: Blue Remembered Hills & As You Like It
Publication: West Sussex Gazette
Publication Data: unknown
Text Header: Wick climbs its Everest
Text: Content

Wick Theatre Company are deep into uncharted territory this week, with their first ever repertory season. It was a daunting, demanding prospect. But as Bob Ryder, who is appearing in both plays, says, the reasons for doing it were greater than the practical difficulties the project threatened.

Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter have been running alternately over a two-week period which concludes this weekend.

The entire cast of the Potter can also be found in the Shakespeare.

“It’s something we had never done before,” Bob says. “It’s highly unusual for an amateur company to even think about trying it. It’s partly because we were looking for a challenge. It’s a bit like Everest! The other novelty is that we were looking for a play that we could do in the round and to try to broaden it into an outdoor theatre indoors. We were looking at a couple of plays – As You Like It and Blue Remembered Hills. Someone had the bright idea of doing both. First of all we thought it couldn’t be done because of all the practical difficulties, but then everyone fancied the challenges of trying.”

Bob admits it has been tiring: “You realise that all your evenings start to disappear. If it is not one show you are rehearsing, it is the other.”

Blue Remembered Hills first appeared on BBC TV in 1979. It features adult actors all transformed into seven-year-old children, and tells the tale of their hair-raising adventures in the Forest of Dean during one summer afternoon in 1943. As kids do, four little boys – Peter, Willie, Raymond and John – fight, climb trees, and argue.

“The girls are very manipulative and bullying and rather cruel as well as being all the nice things that girls can be. The thing moves along from really quite comic observations about the way that children behave. It moves towards something rather darker and more complex…”

Bob has been with the company for 15 year’s now. He lives in Hove but was born just a few hundred yards away from the barn.

“It’s very much a community-based set-up. The Barn Theatre at Southwick belongs to what used to be a village, and you still have the feel of that. Most of the members live within a mile or two, and it’s a very nice building with a long history of local involvement. It’s not a transitory kind of place. People do stay a long time and develop their skills there.”

The Potter play will be performed on Wednesday and Friday evening and Shakespeare on Thursday evening. On Saturday September 18 the season ends with a matinee of Blue Remembered Hills and As You Like It in the evening.

Matinees start at 2.30pm, evening at 7.45pm. Tickets are £7 from the Barn Box Office on 01273 597094.

If you see both plays on one Saturday – this will cost £10 for the two performances.

Review #1: Blue Remembered Hills & As You Like It
Publication: Shoreham Herald
Publication Data: Unknown
Reviewer: Jeremy Malies
Text Header: Wick twice as nice
Text: Content

THE Wick Theatre Company presented As You Like It last week at the Barn, Southwick. The piece is the best Shakespeare production I have seen all year, being witty, packed with inventive performances and original in direction.

As Rosalind, Leila Leam was almost cinematic in her attention to facial expression and small detail. It’s an inspired response to the challenge of playing an intimate venue in the round, often only a yard from the audience. As a surprisingly up-beat Jacques, David Creedon distinguished himself with a resonant and wonderfully paced ‘seven ages of man’ that was so magical and fresh I almost broke the spell by applauding.

The decision to portray Oliver’s wrestler, Charles, as a female martial arts expert was a clever piece of mischief and Jenny Burtenshaw was a delight. As Orlando, Greg Robinson was clean-cut and stood on his dignity marvellously in the mock wooing scenes. There was one stumbling block. Shakespeare intended to tease us as to Touchstone’s sanity but Pat Lyne’s two-dimensional interpretation of the role somewhere between a ’40s spiv and Max Miller was so primitive that it makes subtlety impossible.

Elsewhere, director Bob Ryder should be congratulated on overwhelming theatrical intelligence and winning visual gags: Duke Senior being ferried around on stretcher and drip, love notes as paper darts and a shepherdess with a lamb sticking out of her rucksack.

The uncluttered, effective set consisted of little more than a wood-chip floor. Mike Medway’s lighting was excellent, particularly when suggesting dappled morning sunshine. The sound effects were a sustained joy.

Shakespeare’s pastoral comedy was part of a double bill. In rep with As You Like It, the company presented Dennis Potter’s Blue Remembered Hills. First broadcast by the BBC in 1979, Blue Remembered Hills is set in the Forest of Dean on a summer’s day in 1943. Seven children act out squabbles and petty jealousies against the backdrop of rationing, an escaped POW and a father held captive by the Japanese.

Potter’s ingenious and provocative twist is that the children are played by adults and the piece has an anti-nostalgia message similar to Lord of the Flies.

Several cast members appear in both pieces: after a glide-on rôle as the fairy Hymen in the Forest of Arden, Mark Best was a mainspring of events in Potter’s Gloucestershire. His intense, resourceful presence captures every cadence of the juvenile slanging matches. Nick Richmond was similarly impressive in sustaining a speech impediment through 90 minutes of dense, taut dialogue. Bob Ryder’s treatment of adolescent self-loathing and pyromania was closely observed.

Blue Remembered Hills manages to be elegiac and topical at the same time. It brings us up short at the notion that there was once an era when children could run free playing outdoors, stopping only when it was time to come in for tea.

Review #2: As You Like It
Publication: Brighton Argus
Publication Data: September 21 2004
Reviewer: Barrie Jerram
Text Header: Play is almost as you like it
Text: Content

TO START its new season, Wick Theatre Company set themselves the ambitious challenge of performing two plays on alternate nights – the first of these being Shakespeare’s sylvan comedy, As You Like It.

The Forest of Arden was skilfully evoked with the play being performed in the round on a woodland floor of bark chippings surrounded by tree branches. The effect is completed with birdsong and dappled sunlight together with original music from local composers.

The plot is a complex one involving villainy, a usurped dukedom, banishment and rustic humour.

The tale follows the romantic tribulations of four couples, the principal pair being Orlando and Rosalind who, through necessity, ha to disguise herself as a man

Hers is not the only case of cross-dressing in this production. Women play several of the male characters, a point which weakened an otherwise good production with high-quality acting.

Review #3: Blue Remembered Hill
Publication: Brighton Argus
Publication Data: September 21 2004
Reviewer: Barrie Jerram
Text Header: How child’s play has its victims
Text: Content

TO alternate with As You Like It, the Wick Theatre Company has chosen a play originally written for television by Dennis Potter. It recalled a summer’s day spent by a gang of children playing in the Forest of Dean during the Second World War.

To them, war is only a game they can re-enact and dream of joining. As we watch the seven children play, we become aware of the group dynamics with the struggle for leadership, the changing alliances and the tormenting of the weaker members. Their actions reflect the world around them with fighting and acts of mindless violence and cruelty. Their persecution and taunting of the weak Donald ends in tragedy. But their remorse is was short-lived as they find excuses for their actions and seek to escape blame.

Despite this serious undercurrent, the play is full of humour. The realism of the forest settings and their varying moods were brought about through extremely clever use of the lighting. Full credit goes to Mike Medway and the rest of the technical team.

The play is a delight to watch as the adult actors turned themselves into children. They capture not only the spirit of the youngsters but also their childish body language.

is a delight to realism of , not the least of it coming about through adult actors playing the young children. Particularly impressive was Mark Best as Willie, all gangling and gawky and Katie Brownings as the ghoulish tomboy, Audrey, who is always ready to bash someone up. Bob Ryder’s portrayal of the tormented Donald is truly heartbreaking. A pathetic creature having to endure not only the loss of his father missing in the Far East and physical abuse from his mother, but also the cruelty from the other children. It was almost too painful to watch the scene where, in deep despair, he rocks backwards and forwards, banging his head against the wall and calling for his father to come back.

The excellence of the writing was well matched by Pat Lyne’s sensitive direction and the high standard of acting. Each of them managed to capture not only the spirit of youngsters Judith Berrill gave a delightful portrayal of Angela, who one sensed would grow up to become a little madam. There were solid performances from David Peaty and John Garland as the rivals for top place in the gang. Nick Richmond had the difficult rôle of the stuttering Raymond.

Review #4: Blue Remembered Hills & As You Like It
Publication: Words & Music
Publication Data: No.113 November/December 2004 – page 9
Reviewer: Gordon Bull
Text Header: A Tour-de-Force
Text: Content

That the Wick Theatre Company could put on two such plays, cycled within nine days was surely a tour-de-force without parallel for amateur theatre, especially when the playwrights were Potter and Shakespeare. How could they achieve such excellence when several key players were taking part in both works?

Blue Remembered Hills took us back to well remembered pleasures and playground privations. Set in a forest the antics of the children [played so realistically by adults] mirrored in many ways those of adulthood. One wonders if we mature at all!

I was quite overwhelmed by the realism of the fights, the sobs, the effects of the girls, the pram and baby, [‘dolly’] one was thrown back in the river of life.

The direction, lighting, music and effects in this play directed by Pat Lyne was scintillating, touching and moving. To pick out a star performer is impossible. For me, every one of these ‘children’ existed there and then, even my old girl friend of days gone by reappeared as if by magic and made me swallow! I don’t recollect children swearing in those days and certainly not “oh my god”[!], but maybe I was more sheltered than Denis Potter in those wartime exploits. What would we have done without those bombers and fighter planes for playtime? As for doctors and nurses-well! Superb acting by all the cast.

As You Like It was no less perfect, produced by Bob Ryder. After some early difficult fast talking both players and audience got into the swing of Shakespeare’s language and things flowed with a brilliant updating of each theme into 20/21 century contemporary life. Cross dressing was inevitable perhaps, there being a shortage of men, but again it fitted in with today’s melange of men with lovers of every hue.

Rosalind [Leila Leam] was a most desirable creature even when acting the boy. Recorder players [pupils of St. Christopher, School, Hove] and other musicians provided a worthy accompaniment to Adam’s madrigal singing and Dennis, too performed a good dance. Touchstone [Pat Lyne] the Court Jester had a pretty wit.