June 7, 2007
Getting to the performance space for Canterbury Tales is a pilgrimage in itself. It's a quarter-hour walk through the grounds of Magdalen College, following helpful signs reading "To Canterbury" and cast members welcoming you through each gate, before you get to the patch of lawn by a pond at the back of the Fellows' Garden. The seats are already full up and the audience have spilled over on to blankets on the ground, with members of the production team keeping paths clear "because the actors will be running about". They deserve their large audience. Perhaps it helps that the play's been running for a few days now, but the cast are comfortable in their parts, with no hesitancy or lack of conviction. Also missing is the distancing sensation I get from watching some other small productions, a result of being braced for the next cringeworthy moment. Instead I am caught up in it. The only distraction is the occasional midge in my hair.
This is a new adaptation of seven of the Tales by Harriet Bradley, the director, based on Nevil Coghill's modern translation. Rarefied high culture it ain't; it's immediate, ribald and full of energy. Bottoms are aimed jauntily out of windows, people carouse and get outrageously drunk, and there's lots and lots of 'swyving'. There's a physical quality to the acting; every character has their own distinct body language and they make the space their own. "You don't realise how dirty it is when you're reading it," I overhear someone saying with a giggle at the interval.
I am reluctant to name-check specific actors, as the whole cast were excellent. Johanna Devereux's lascivious proto-feminist Wife of Bath, Tom Garner's legless Miller and Flossie Draper's bombastic, hypocritical Friar were all great, but the real joy of this production is the wide range of characters everyone portrays and the seamless way it all works together. The character of Chaucer himself gets booed off stage by the others early in this play when his flowery tale of a questing knight doesn't go down well, but seven centuries later he's clearly having the last – and lasting – laugh.
This is a new adaptation of seven of the Tales by Harriet Bradley, the director, based on Nevil Coghill's modern translation. Rarefied high culture it ain't; it's immediate, ribald and full of energy. Bottoms are aimed jauntily out of windows, people carouse and get outrageously drunk, and there's lots and lots of 'swyving'. There's a physical quality to the acting; every character has their own distinct body language and they make the space their own. "You don't realise how dirty it is when you're reading it," I overhear someone saying with a giggle at the interval.
I am reluctant to name-check specific actors, as the whole cast were excellent. Johanna Devereux's lascivious proto-feminist Wife of Bath, Tom Garner's legless Miller and Flossie Draper's bombastic, hypocritical Friar were all great, but the real joy of this production is the wide range of characters everyone portrays and the seamless way it all works together. The character of Chaucer himself gets booed off stage by the others early in this play when his flowery tale of a questing knight doesn't go down well, but seven centuries later he's clearly having the last – and lasting – laugh.