Sherriff Night 2008

A big thank you to David Baker for the photos and to Roland Wales for the review below. To see the photos as a slideshow click here.

The evening opened in St Helena, where Robbie Mallett, despite having had the script for only two days, gave us a surprisingly tall Napoleon. Moving backward 20 years, and several thousand miles north, we came next to Naples, where Anna Steinitz succeeded in wearing considerably more clothing than Emma Hamilton was famed for, while Diana Llewellyn fussed around perfectly as her mother. Later in the first half they were joined by Will Perham, whose performance as Nelson was rather marred by the fact that he retained both eyes and hands........and they say that rowers have dedication!

Sandwiched between our glimpses of Emma Hamilton was a short scene from The Long Sunset, Sherriff’s play on the departure of the Romans from Britain. The three principals - George Kan, Dougie Annesley and Sophie Kenneally did an excellent job in mining the seam of humour in the play, as was true also of the cast of The White Carnation, especially Hannah Marsters as the ghost and Sophie Crocker as the coroner.

The first half ended with the Headmaster in fine form interviewing R C Sherriff, as portrayed by his alarmingly convincing lookalike Mr Smalman-Smith, whose future as an RCS impersonator must now be assured.

Owen Newburn as Chipping and Jack Kenneally as his friend Steafel helped anchor the second half of the evening, with confident and assured performances in perfectly hideous sweaters. Miss Anderson’s feisty performance will be long remembered (and perhaps reprised occasionally on the river), while Peter Wales, as the Innkeeper, deserves special mention for being the only actor all night to speak in a foreign language (as opposed to a foreign accent, which was the route favoured by the French Generals, Tim Lingard and Patrick Beeley).

After the funny (and very cost-effective) scene from the Four Feathers which starred Anthony Hollis as the General and Mark Gillis as Harry Faversham, the evening moved on to one of the few funny scenes in Journey’s End. The world-weariness of Will Perham’s Stanhope was either a testament to wonderful acting or hard training, or perhaps both, and he was supported by a strong cast, including Tudor Morris’s unique interpretation of Mason the chef as a cross between Igor and Uriah Heep.

The patchwork of the evening was stitched (almost seamlessly) together by Toby Mumford and Emma Baker. Burdened by scripts laced with excruciating puns, they nevertheless handled things with grace, humour and charm, and only the occasional mangled pronunciation (English Department take note).

Normal reviews never include the backstage people, but just as this was no normal evening in the theatre, this is no normal review: hats off to the lads in the booth - led by Dom Saul, and including Andrew Ronaldson, Michael Galvin and the Socha boys Chris and Patrick) - and the behind-the-scenes support, ably marshalled by John Kim and Sophie Robinson.