REVIEWS : Great boas of today and other beasts
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Silver Lining Oldham Coliseum There must be few plays that take the foot-and-mouth epidemic of the late Sixties as their subject. Although the Cheshire plain can hardly be accounted remote, Ken's gruff and forbidding independence - strongly conveyed by Ian Hogg - has made his dairy farm into a fortress. His life is milking, shovelling and coming to table to ask the forbearing Muriel (Rita May) "What's for't?" We feel this tedium rather too directly, though the full implications of the repression on vieware masked by the comedy of John Chambers' affectionately satiric view of his hero.
The disruption of this chilly pastoral comes with the foot-and-mouth. For Ken it is a double visitation, since he must also endure the plague of the outside world just as the emotional life that he has transferred to his doomed beasts is denied him.
The action hovers between gothic threat and female healing. But what must be healed cannot be spoken in this stoically inarticulate setting, so Chambers must rely on our reading between the lines. In fact this is all too easy to do from early on, and theplay proceeds at a ruminative plod towards its surprisingly gentle conclusion.
Jeffrey Wainwright
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments