Keep on Moving

The last performance in this season’s current Centre Stage programme was a musical drama about a Victorian fairground.  FairGame theatre company developed the play based on interviews with a traveller family who told them about incidents from their lives.  Playing multiple parts the small cast managed to create the impression of a whole menagerie of wild animals, facinated and at times intimidating crowds, rival performers and a variety of acts.  They also gave a vivid sense of what it was like to be a child or young person living as part of a performer family.  The play recreated a sense not only of the fairground but also of a life before travel and television when knowlege of animals, different human characteristics and crime was more fragmentary and disturbing.  The play challenged us to think about our changing attitudes to animals, disability and difference.

Happy Jack

Last Friday’s Centre Stage performance was a play: Happy Jack by John Godber.  John Godber is a well known playwright, originally from a mining family (this play is said to be based on the life of his grandparents), and with a longstanding involvement with the Hull Truck Theatre Company.  The play told the life story of a Yorkshire couple – Jack, a miner, and Liz his house proud wife.  We were given an overview of their life from courtship to retirement and then given vignettes of its highs and lows.  The epithet ‘happy’ was ironic.  Jack was at times angry, violent and withdrawn – but surprisingly also wrote poetry (including while his wife was giving birth!). 

The tone was bittersweet:  at times movingly painful, at other times making the audience laugh out loud.  The cast from the Ratatat Theatre Company played it brilliantly holding this tension which made the play feel a believable life story.