FIELDS OF GOLD. To 20 November.
Scarborough
FIELDS OF GOLD
by Alex Jones
Stephen Joseph Theatre (The Round) To 20 November 2004
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 November
Trouble on the farm and dilemmas all-round make for an absorbing drama. Though set in Cumbria, its farming background at the height of the 2001 Foot-and-Mouth catastrophe gives Alex Jones play a resonance in the Yorkshire farmlands around Scarborough. And Jones raises a rich clutch of other issues, both familiar and less charted.
Even without the disease, Ben's farm is doing bad business, driving him into a cycle of drink and aggression. This is the play's most problematic vein; drunk depressives soon become monotonous. Colin MacLachlan injects some sympathy for the character but, as Ben turns on one well-meaning character after another he becomes unsympathetic and predictable, two killers for any dramatic character.
His wife Mags could easily become a long-suffering stereotype, but Jones strengthens her involvement in later scenes. Anyway, Susan Twist is too fine an actor to stay in the shadows. She provides a depth to Mags' patience (and finds an optimism there), often through precise, alert detail in facial and physical responses to events in the farm kitchen where she spends most of her time.
There's good work from Judy Wilson as Ben's mother edging into senility, dead set against her son, favouring her grandson Jem. And from Andrew Brooke as a soldier temporarily stationed nearby, a tall figure whose love for the farmer's petite daughter Jule proves size really doesn't matter when you're in love.
But it's really in the young pair Jones places his centre of dramatic gravity. Jule (a vibrant Claire Lams, smilingly confident in her greater maturity when squabbling with her brother, showing serious maturity and moral concern when it matters) is a young adult forced to choose the farm she was born to and has lived for, or love. Teenager Jem's talk of aliens and speculation about the universe objectify his sexual self-uncertainty.
Director Laurie Sansom balances quirky character comedy and the serious overview finely, while the straw-strewn circles on the kitchen floor of Jessica Curtis' set blend into the golden exterior (little sense this is a dairy-farm though). So sure is the production's touch that even a cello picking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' as a spangled roof lights up is magical rather than sentimental.
Ben: Colin MacLachlan
Mags: Susan Twist
Lily: Judy Wilson
Jem: Andrew Turner
Jule: Claire Lams
Dave: Andrew Brooke
Director: Laurie Sansom
Designer: Jessica Curtis
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Sound: Ben Vickers
Fight co-ordinator: Christopher Main
Dialect coach: Heather van Straten
2004-11-21 03:15:52