Cider With Rosie
by Laurie Lee
adapted for the stage by James Roose-Evans
Performed at Church Hill Theatre, Morningside Road
Wednesday 17th - Saturday 20th March 2010
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Creative Team
The Cast
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Synopsis:
It is the summer of 1918, and the end of the war sees the young Laurie Lee moving to a new home in a Cotswold village. Life here is peaceful, slow and governed by the seasons. It is a child’s paradise. That is until Lee meets two warring Grannies, a goat, and the tantalizing temptation of supping cider with Rosie Burdock…
Laurie Lee’s autobiography, ‘Cider with Rosie’, became a modern classic, selling over four million copies. In this adaptation, James Roose-Evans has skilfully and imaginatively recreated Laurie Lee’s poetic evocation of his childhood for the stage.
Lee was born at the start of the First World War and grew up during a time of change, when the rural traditions of past centuries were being swept aside in the path of twentieth century progress. As Laurie Lee reached manhood, the old world was vanishing and he gives us a haunting vision of its last days.
Review:
Edinburgh Evening News - Neil McEwan (Thursday, 18th March 2010) ***
Cider With Rosie
DISMISSED mainly by those who have never read it as a bucolic, golden version of childhood, Laurie Lee's Gloucestershire memoir contains much that is dark and by modern standards disturbing.
Edinburgh People's Theatre's adaptation plays into the hands of the critics by producing a show of honeyed sweetness without any vinegar to balance it out.
All of the above, however, doesn't take away from the intrinsic qualities of this production. This was a beautifully staged and choreographed show which, whatever else it did with Lee's text, allowed plenty of his marvellous, poetic dialogue to reach the audience's ears.
There were excellent performances from the whole cast but worthy of particular praise was Pauline Waugh as Lee's mother, who perfectly captured the character on the page with the mix of delusion, delight and eccentric warmth she exuded in the midst of bringing up her large family.
Pat Hymers had the most difficult task of the night as onstage narrator in the guise of Lee himself. He had swathes of rich, descriptive, dialogue to master and, although faltering a few times, did an excellent job of setting the scenes. However, it would be fair to say that the limited budget and cast available to EPT meant that a little too much was put upon his shoulders. In addition, there were several scenes where the cast sat around telling stories of characters that appear in the book and not enough was done to stop this feeling like padding.
It may be that within the constraints of budget and cast it would have been impossible for the company to produce a fully rounded version of Cider with Rosie and that the complexities of rural life with its poverty, class system, petty cruelties and the harshness of the conditions could never have been successfully portrayed. EPT almost certainly made the right decision, therefore, to focus on the warmer elements which are at the heart of Lee's work.
In truth, this may not have been the full flagon of Cider with Rosie but a good pint's worth is certainly better than nothing.