TITHE WAR! Eastern Angles. Touring to 17 November

Tour

TITHE WAR!
by Ivan Cutting. Music by Pat Whymark

Eastern Angles tour to 17 November 2001
Tour info 01473 211498

Runs 2hr 45min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 12 October at Saffron Walden County High School

A musical about taxation seems unlikely but despite some sprawling storytelling the fascinating tale of an unlikely protest wins through.For nearly 20 years Ivan Cutting's Eastern Angles theatre company has toured villages and small towns around Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex with new plays reflecting the region's identity.

Tithe War! details an unlikely event. In 1934 a conventional gentleman farmer Rowland Rash (Glynn Dilley) refused to pay the 10% tax due to the Church of England. An unlikely martyr, his sense of the tithe's injustice was encouraged by his novelist wife Doreen (Anstey Thomas). She proclaimed herself a socialist while deprecating 'little men' and welcoming Mosleyite fascists to protect the family land from seizure.

Cutting's play-with-songs reflects her confusion of politics and romanticism. Early scenes move like agitprop political drama through the poorer farmers' organised protests, and political theatre's taste for reworking popular genres gives a well-wrought pastiche of thirties comedy with a slow-witted policeman trying simultaneously to man a roadblock and telephone kiosk.

Pat Whymark's attractive period-flavoured melodies curdle into acidic twists for the darker songs. However, while Cutting's script is generally well-honed – tithes neatly summed up as the Church gaining its flesh but losing its soul – the lyrics can clunk: 'This is not what I had in mind/ When our two hearts became so entwined'. (Just how entwined is so entwined?).

Structurally the play suffers from the long lead-in to the main story and from Rowley's lengthy absence as a character owing to Dilley being needed to play a fascist and PC Plod. It's hard, then, to rekindle interest in the Rashs' marriage. The local lesbian aristo is underdeveloped – a potentially intriguing character largely wasted on a running gag.

The cast of seven act and play instruments decently. Despite some untidiness and stylistic tension, the history chronicled (the protest contributed to the eventual ending of tithes), the portrait of relationships caught up in wider events and the company's knowledge of its audiences, make for an interesting evening

2001-10-14 13:55:21