Writer: Kate Webster
Director: Jess Frieze
Forest Theatre Company, with joint home bases in London and Yorkshire, could hardly have picked a better site for their first Yorkshire production. Shed takes place in a garden with a shed and the Orchard Garden is an attractive setting with a shed already in place – all in all, a delightful place to watch a play on an early evening in Summer, with a protective dome to shelter the audience if the weather turns nasty.
However, there is a downside to staging the play in a site-specific location. Apart from occasional difficulties with miking, there is the fact that the orchard garden is considerably bigger than Alan’s house garden and the amount of time spend entering and exiting is unhelpful to Kate Webster’s short, snappy scenes.
The setting contains a very substantial shed and – centre stage – a splendid tree. For the rest Forest Theatre Company add tables and chairs. Jess Frieze may be a little restricted by the amount of time spent on exits and entrances, but the production is relatively static except for the occasional explosion into life: a water-pistol fight, for instance, or a retired English teacher, precariously perched on a block in vest and shorts, chasing away potential house purchasers with his own words to the Dambusters March.
That ex-English teacher is Alan, 68 years old and apparently caring for nothing except cricket and William Shakespeare who furnishes him with a quotation for just about every situation. He lost his wife some 13 years previously and his attitude to his daughters is confusing – and confused. Rachel is 17, about to go to university to study fine arts. Gayle, many years her senior, comes back briefly every so often from her post at Reading University. Then Alan drops his bombshell: he gifts them the house and he is going to live in the shed! There has to be more to this than meets the eye and it fairly soon becomes apparent that this has to do with Alan’s deteriorating mental condition.
Alan is played by Duncan Hess, for the most part, with charming insouciance and a ready turn of Shakespeare. In later scenes, as his condition darkens, a blank aggression takes over at times. Bethany-Hannah Winteringham is convincing in portraying the traumas and decisions of a 17-year-old, though we could have done without a painful drunk scene. As Gayle Kirsty Langley has the most difficult role and never quite convinces as a university lecturer determined to get her own way. She comes into her own as she mellows in the closing scenes. The most compelling performance in the most sympathetic part comes from Morgan Archer as Nad, the postman who lives next door, nonchalantly helping Alan and providing a never-ending stream of cricket commentaries.
Not all the scenes register with the planned impact, but the later stages provide a steady stream of moving moments, especially from Hess.
Runs until 27th August 2023.
