REVIEW: THRUSH GREEN

Redlynch Players

Manor Farm Meadow, Hamptworth

ADAPTED from the popular Miss Read series of books, Thrush Green saw its first outing onto the stage. It is a sympathetic and true to character adaptation by Ron Perry, keeping the gentle country pace. Miss Curdle (Sarah Newman) is the Romany matriarch, played with depth and stoicism, focussed on keeping her fairground going, as a testament to her late husband (Mark Everett). Everett also played a couple of other characters, showing his versatility as an actor. Narrating is Winnie (Debbie Shipton), the Doctor’s wife, who remembered a huge number of lines and delivered them with a thoughtful placidity that I associate with a slower pace of life. As the day progressed, so did the lives of the villagers, with their own dramas unfolding like the flowers of spring and an acceptance that what grows must also die to make way for what is to come. The marquee in a field of buttercups, with wonderfully conceived set and props, provided the perfect backdrop to this bucolic play.

Rebecca Case