by
Les May
THE
FIRST production of the Rochdale Curtain Theatre for the 2019-20
season is Spring and Port Wine. It’s an everyday story of
Northern folks in the shape of the Crompton family; Father Rafe,
Mother Daisy, their four children who are young adults, and a
cadging neighbour who manages her affairs by ‘robbing Peter to
pay Paul’. You’ll find all the cliches, all the stereotypes
and, to use a word currently in vogue, all the tropes, of Northern
family life, including Brass Bands, The Messiah and Huddersfield
Choral Society. It’s a ‘feelgood play’, and I loved
every minute of it!
It
first saw light as a radio play in 1957 under a different name, then
a stage play and had to wait until 1965 before it got its present
title. Knowing when it was written, and hence when it is set, helps
make sense of the part of the play when Rafe tells how he and Daisy
met a party of Hunger Marchers in the 1930s, men who, as he puts it
were whistling because they hadn’t the strength to sing.
As
ever the acting was first class, but for me the star was the lady who
played Daisy, not because she had taken over the part at very short
notice and had to work from the script, something she did almost
transparently, but because she brought to the role just the the right
amount of fluster, patience, stoicism, loyalty and resolve. An
excellent and very believable performance.
For
more details of this and upcoming shows visit
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