| The magic of live theatre |
Theatr na n'Og |
| Theatr na n'Og- The Trial of Elgan Jones , Dylan Thomas Theatre Swansea , September 22, 2006 |
This review first appeared in the Western Mail...It's pitch black, the wind howls and a flash of lightening illuminates a boy holding a gun. Scary stuff. And, of course, the kids love it, whooping, shouting, cheering. Just what do you do to frighten a generation suckled on videogames and with access to computer-generated horror ? But somehow live theatre does have a magic - and if it's like this Theatr na n'Og production created for 9-10 year olds, then it can involve an audience in a way that the electronic media cannot approach. Especially so in this re-creation of the trial of a young boy charged with trespass, poaching, theft and murder, where we find ourselves not only actually in the scenes of the alleged crimes, a forest and a country house, but in the courtroom as jurors. We're there to pass judgement first on someone who's accused of sheep-stealing thanks to the very unreliable witness of an elderly deaf and dotty lady (not guilty, say we, guilty says the judge, and in 1865 his word is law) and then on Elgan Jones, a poor frightened working-class 12 year-old. We hear damning evidence from a beguiling Gloucester kitchen-maid, Elizabeth Frome, and then from the boy himself - one of whom is patently lying. English working-class kitchen maid or working-class sweet-faced local boy ? No contest, eh ? When I joined the audience, they unanimously returned a not guilty verdict, half of them even for crimes to which Elgan had already confessed ! (The sympathy vote, some might cynically say, is always there in any justice system – and sympathy for a boy who has to fee a starving family while the nobs next door have an excess is more than understandable, of course.) It's all more than forum theatre, of course, and the performances are but part of a process that has involved teachers and includes visiting the city museum across the road and a CD. The weakness of the piece, it seems to me, is in its patent steering of the audience-jurors towards favouring Elgan's innocence, which could mean that the apparent empowerment of the kids by making them the jury is superficial - there's not really a case to debate, since the drama has clearly been created to support Elgan's version of events and we're on his side from the beginning. And yet at the heart of the tale is the idea of unreliable evidence and the suggestion that the powerful can always overrule uncertainty anyway - by weighting our sympathies it strikes me that scriptwriter/director Geinor Styles is rather complicating any arguments about justice. But as an introduction to a postmodern world where everything is relative I guess it's fair enough. Fortunately the resource packs that the schools get tackle such problems - and they will also get the kids (all 4650 who will have seen the show) discussing all various subtexts undeveloped in the script, like class, inequality, property, punishment and so on. As a piece of theatre it certainly involves its audience and the three actors, Owen Morse, Ioan Evans and Mali Tudno-Jones, handle the nine characters with ease and there's a particularly fine set from Sean Crowley, lighting from Simon Gough and atmospheric music from Greg Palmer. And I guess we should see the audience involvement as just another theatrical device, rather than an exercise in decoding alternative narratives. Those teachers will, I suspect, have a lot of questions to discuss back in the classroom. The story, by the way, is based on an actual case. The real Elgan Jones (one Joseph Lewis), like the fictional Elgan, pleaded self-defence but was found guilty and hanged. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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