| National Theatre Wales' Love Letter to the NHS: The Stick Maker Tales - Llandrindod Wells 11th July 2018 |
At National Theatre Wales |
| National Theatre Wales- The Stick Maker Tales , The Pavilion Llandrindod Wells , July 11, 2018 |
It is not often that Llandrindod Wells gets a visit from the likes of National Theatre Wales and it was a joy to find a good and responsive audience at The Pavilion on the night of the England-Croatia World Cup match on the 11th July, there are times when a cultural event wins out and this was one of them. The event was a performance of "The Stick Maker Tales" by Peter Cox, part of NTW's NHS70 tour of Wales with different, locally inspired productions celebrating the seventy years since the National Health Service was founded thanks to legendary Welsh politician, Aneurin Bevan.The talents involved in this production demonstrate not only that Wales has a wealth of talent working at the highest level but that in the rural heart of Wales here in Radnorshire there is world class talent, for Stickmaker Tales is written by award winning Rhayader based playwright, Peter Cox, whose credits include 227 episodes of Channel 4 TV serial Brookside and work commissioned by Sir Peter Hall for The National Theatre (England). His extensive work in youth and community theatre in Mid Wales, in particular "The Valley of Nantgwyllt", about the flooding of the Elan river to make the dams, and the Rhayader Community Play, "The Lost Harp", won him an MBE in 2010. The small town of Rhayader is nearest to The Elan Valley, the location for Cox's play which captures the wild beauty of the place, the magic of the Spring and Summer there and the desperate harshness of the long winter months. The mind's eye picture generated by the protagonist, loan sheep farmer Geth Roberts, played by the excellent Llion Williams, and aided by Jennifer Lee and Joe Fletcher's minimal and highly effective design: a few simple items of furniture - everything used, especially the "sticks" of the title for the farmer's pass time and passion making shepherds' crooks - and the simple and subtly operated lighting working in tandem with projections which are impressionistic rather than literal: snow and ice, darkness and shadows, sky and clouds, the deep cleft of two high hills meeting and the clear night sky with the myriad stars of the milky way (the Elan Valley is renowned as an area where there is no light pollution atall, you really can see the Milky Way on a clear night). All of this captures the beauty but also the grimness and loneliness of the small scale, batchelor sheep farmer's life, kept company only by his beloved sheep dogs, the old Ben and the younger "apprentice" dog, Meg. A hard, hard life, the rewards not financial but in the joy and satisfaction of sheep rearing, in the visceral connection to the land with its pleasures and its horrors and in the occasional bursts of social life: livestock market days, the Eisteddfods and the little kindnesses of neighbours, a plate of welsh cakes left on the window ledge "...wrapped in tin foil to keep them from the birds"... At the beginning, as Geth Roberts/Llion Williams begins to tell the story of all the occupational ailments, I expect a litany of illnesses treated by the NHS, but the genius of the story and the extraordinary ability of Williams to inhabit the mind and the physicality of his character (played older than the actor's actual years) soon has us involved and moved by the humour, trials and sadnesses of his life and those of the absent characters of family and friends involved in his story, for example his grandfather, "brought down" by "an old yow" (ewe) and cutting his leg with the knife meant for tagging the ear of her lamb, the fatal cut leading later to his death from "lockjaw" (tetanus); or the nephew to whom he hoped to leave his farm, as the nearest he'd have to a son, who had recovered from the alarming Weill's disease (contracted from infected livestock or rodents in wet and muddy places); and the much later and very serious quad bike accident (all too common on Mid Wales farms) that needed the "helicopter" (the air ambulance, a vital service in this inaccessible area). And finally his own sad decline into the dark of blindness, thinking he's at the end of the road. But life gives him a jolt and he ends up at "Lland'od hospital" where, to his amazement - and here tragedy turns almost to comedy - he finds he can have his eyes replaced! The nurse explaining that from a small cut she will drain the contents of his eye "...you mean just like draining the sump of a tractor!", he says, and so Geth gets his sight back thanks to the simple cataract operation performed regularly by the visiting surgeon at Llandrindod Wells Memorial Hospital (which has escaped the fate of smaller cottage hospitals in Mid Wales and still remains open today). Llion Williams, a North Wales actor, has worked on and researched the Radnor accent, the play is peppered with dialect words and manners of speech, and he achieves the Radnor sound (with a bit of extra lilt), no mean feat as this is a difficult one to get. He's an exemplary talent, working in English and Welsh, in 2017 he won the Theatre in Wales Award in both language categories. You may have seen him recently on TV in "Hidden" or in "Y Gwyll/Hinterland" or in runaway success, "Keeping Faith". A regular with Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru and at Theatr Clwyd, in the past he has worked with the excellent but now defunct theatre in education company of 40 years, Theatr Powys, who were based here in Llandrindod Wells until 2011. After the play, I spoke briefly to Peter Cox, who described his process and introduced me to some of his sources present at the first performance, members of the farming community who had generously and enthusiastically shared their experiences, memories and anecdotes, sometimes handed down from generation to generation. In particular, with her stories of child bearing in pre-NHS Radnorshire, there was the extraordinary, 89 year old Betty Davis of Henfron Farm, where she was born, in the Elan Valley and which is still farmed by the same family. This is the beauty of the process and the particular genius of Cox in making the experience of sharing as much a part of the production for the community who are also its audience: the uncanny experience of having this familiar but rarely depicted "hidden culture" of Radnor put before you, like a mirror held up to a very old and disappearing way of local life and to those intrepid and hardy farming people of the Radnor hills, who today enjoy much better health care with the NHS than did their grandparents or their great-grandparents. The Stick Maker Tales played two nights at The Pavilion Llandrindod Wells on the 11th and 12th of July. It plays at the Old Town Hall Welshpool this Saturday 14th July for a matinee and an evening performance. The NHS70 tour then continues with different shows tailored to the areas they visit: "For All I Care" is in Nye Bevan's home town of Tredegar; "As Long as the Heart Beats" is performed in Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport; "Laughter is the Best Medicine" (with a stand up comedy element) is in Camarthen; "Come Back Tomorrow" in Swansea; "Touch" (with dance and interactive elements and made with an international team of dancer- choreographers) is in Bangor; and finally, "ECZEMA! (a black comedy exploring the skin disease) is in Cardiff on 28th July. Some of the plays double up dates, playing on the same days in different places, so check the NTW website for details: nationaltheatrewales.org |
Reviewed by: Jenny March |
This review has been read 2260 times There are 95 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
