"I write on my lap with the wind rocking the wagon"
North Country Theatre have made another visit to Helmsley on their latest long tour of the North. They've appeared regularly at the Arts Centre now for about nine years and have built up a loyal following, such as filled the theatre on the evening of Sunday 18th October. This time they brought a revival of their
Home on the Range, a tale of women on the famous 2000mile Oregon Trail, based mainly on the diary of Annis Harker from the Dales. Most of the audience were once again impressed by the company's invention and skill. But some were a little disappointed.
It's true the pace was slow and the lack of a strong through-line of narrative providing the shape and forward moving drive did mean we had to let ourselves settle into the images and the recurring ritual and let them give us a sense of the long and heavy trudge on the trail. For me that worked well. The ritual was enacted right from the start in the fluidly choreographed construction of the canvas topped wagon and continued in the transitions from one episode to the next.
The episodes themselves, little scenes of life and family relationships on the trail, seemed true to the matter-of-fact way Annis Harker reported them. They were not spectacular. Much like one would experience anywhere. It was the context that was unique. I liked this juxtaposition of the everyday with the epic.
Then there is the Company's approach to theatre. They make a point of engaging with the audience as actors. This started in the bar before the performance. Nobby Dimon, their writer/director/lighting & sound man/general factotum, made quite a performance of selling programmes. This continued in the auditorium, where he involved "our youngest actor" in selling more.
This talking to the audience continued within the play itself. They joked about just being three women and assured us there were men too. And, lo, they duly appeared as life-sized puppets, sketchily dressed, a bit like scarecows, manipulated by the three women (double meaning intended). They do it again, though more theatrically, in their repeated mantra in the between-scene trudging, "imagine three women..." Think of the Prologue to Shakespeare's Henry V exhorting us to ..." entertain conjecture of a time ..." And of Brecht's ways of reminding us these are only actors. It's in a long tradition and one that has been well mined in the North not so long ago with issue plays and documentary drama. Alan Plater's "Close the Coalhouse Door" comes to mind.
For me it doesn't break the spell, as it does for some, so much as intensify it - when, that is, the scenes that follow are effectively done. And here I was a bit frustrated. The actors had done so much to create these scenes and the ideas were there. But they needed to take a moment or two longer to express and hold on to the significant moments of feeling and relationship. All right, we don't want it overegged, but we do need to be drawn in to the emotional drama of each scene, withheld in the diary entries, be it the death of the father/husband, or a sense of love and unity in singing round the harmonium. That's what theatre is about, making visible the invisible. They did seem to jump too readily out of the scenes into the trudge, and thus flattened out the drama as a whole.
Maybe making more music would have helped. Like with so much else, they did that beautifully. I longed for more of that.
If you've not seen it, do try to catch it on its tour, the schedule for which you can see on
their website
It's well worth it.
