Grand Day Out at NNF READ ON

A Grand Day out at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival

Tale of Two Cities at St Andrews Hall

Peaceophobia at Rose Lane Car Park

Canticle of the Sun at Saint Peter Mancroft

I’ve been having a moan, of late, that festival programming significantly, and unnecessarily, precluded how much could be seen. Last Saturday, it felt like the gauntlet had been thrown down, as a string of shows offered up a truly varied festival experience for those with a strong constitution and keen knowledge of the city’s layout. Having wandered round the festival gardens, past a giant rotating hourglass, a theatre made of mud, and wheelchair defying dance, I made my way to my first “proper” show of the day, at St Andrews Hall.

Tale of Two Cities proved to be the highlight of the day, and will also, I suspect, prove to be the highlight of my festival. Making full use of the giant performance space available in the hall, an extraordinary structure of a ruined house confronted the audience upon arrival, around which five actor/dancers performed with the assistance of video technology. I was reminded of the National’s seminal production of Marlowe’s Edward II, as a video camera poked and prodded characters behind closed walls, invading their privacy in a way that was both intimate and revelatory. This was a masterful adaptation of Dicken’s text, sensibly unshackled from the impossibly complex narrative of the novel, and instead focusing on its emotional impact.

The cast were universally strong – unusually they were both good actors and dancers – and while the performance took its time to get underway, it gripped when it did. Whether it was Temitope Ajose-Cutting coming to terms with her family history, John Kendell expressing the juddering death on the end of a rope, or Valentina Formenti simply pacing around a table, the set piece dance moves perfectly completed the acerbic, witty words judiciously sprinkled throughout. Camera trickery, wonderful staging, and moments of audience interaction all added up to a brilliant ninety minutes of stage craft that demonstrated how sometimes live theatre can do things no other medium can achieve.

Credit Karol Wyszynski

Peaceophobia was another show with eye catching theatrics at its heart. Staged on the top level of Rose Lane Car Park, the audience were seated in a horseshoe configuration on garden chairs, with only a disassembled Golf for company. Joining the Golf for the evening, were a Supra and a Nova, parked up by performers Ali Yunis, Casper Ahmed and Sohail Hussain, who launched into a heartfelt, anguished protest against rising Islamophobia. It made for a startling opening, but a legitimate one, as their common, almost fetishist, love of cars was laid bare - a simple, but highly effective, device. Despite between a card carrying atheist, I still reckon I know more about Islam than motors, so this fascination with buffing up the paintwork of motorcars proved an effective metaphor for theimpenetrable nature of alternative religious faith. The difference between, of course, that no one gets questioned, harassed and arrested for liking cars. They get all those things through their shade of an Abrahamic Faith so absurdly close to Christianity and Judaism that only ignorance can explain the fear and distrust the former evokes in the latter.

The contrast between the affability of the performers and their shocking anecdotes made for an uneasy hour, and yet therewas positivity in their response to racism that made the performance energising rather than depressing. The show was packed full of ideas – admittedly, some of them should have stayed as ideas – but while occasionally disjointed and unfocused it had heart. I could have done without the mountains of Switzerland, but the closing moments, given over to a call to prayer, were mesmerising.

Credit Emile Holba

Arun Ghosh was brought up in a faith very different from the Abrahamic tradition, but growing up in this country, was still heavily influenced and informed by Christianity. Perhaps that’s why, after nearly nine hundred years since St Francis of Assisi wrote his Canticle of the Sun, he has chosen to set it to music. It is an unusually secular text which talks about the sun and the moon, and about nature and the elements of water, fire and wind. Ghosh acknowledges the influences of jazz, south Asian, and gospel (to which I would add passages more akin to seventies prog rock) producing an involving and complex piece of devotional music, which premiered at Saint Peter Mancroft Church. I don’t have a problem with such a heady cocktail – some of the most effective, transcendent passages were reminiscent of the likes of Hawkwind (complete with wibbly wobbly noises) or the emphatic beats of Acid Mother Temple. It did, however, make for an uneven journey, with some parts working significantly better than others. This was music expertly performed (notwithstanding the challenging acoustics of the church) by a talented group of musicians that sadly, due to a lack of program notes, remain unknown to me. To my mind, it was the perfect example of a curate’s egg and one that felt like a work in progress – it had huge potential, but not the focus that distance and repeated performance can bring.

My marathon session at the festival closed with a lively performance by Grace Petrie in the excellent space of the Speigeltent. Coming across like Billy Bragg’s clever sister, her winning personality had the audience won over from the outset. For a proper review of her performance, however, look elsewhere on Outline, where a fellow that knows about such things will reveal all. For me, it brought the curtain down on a grand day out at a festival that has sometimes felt constricted by practical and financial considerations, but which, on the day, proved it can still deliver.