Nov 4th 2009
P O E T S ’   C O R N E R

AMUSING, AMBITIOUS AND WELL WORTH SEEING

By Tanja Macht

How about having a fine chat with Oscar Wilde?
Or getting drunk side by side with Lord Byron?
What is impossible in normal life becomes reality in a convincingly enacted play by the talented author James Huntrods.

An excessive annual party is just about to take place at Westminster Abbey where all the famous writers are buried, when a young and obviously deranged female poet called Jane enters the scene. Stubbornly denying that she is dead, she tries to figure out what has really happened to her and why she has ended up over here. A range of flashbacks enables her to rebuild her own memory and, in further consequence, to remain commemorated in Poets’ Corner.

In collaboration with a group of promising young actors from the student company Tea for Ten, James Huntrods wrote “Poets’ Corner” – an enjoyable stage play, packed with irony and dark humour, as well as light-hearted jokes and disguised jokes.
It provides an extraordinary entertainment to the audience. But putting all amusement aside, director and writer incorporated one wonderful aspect;

                                      “the death of the poet was kept from his poems”

With so many praiseworthy achievements, the overall synthesis of all the positive aspects is credited to the director Tom Birch who worked closely together with James Huntrods.
Not least it is their merit that the performance was very well-received.
The acting was outstanding excellent and a welcome spectacle.
Ingeniously created characters combined with future excellent actors – the perfect ingredients for a happy performance.
The cast includes Jimmy Walters in the role of educated and mannerly Oscar Wilde, Tom Holloway, playing the supercilious and wine-loving Lord Byron, Rachel Ashwanden representing the young and eager poet Jane Gathering, Rory James Greenfield in the role of the funny Middle-English speaking William Blake, Benji Huntrods, playing the vigorous Charles Dickens, Robert Weedall as “very tired of marriage” Geoffrey Chaucer and finally Janes’ slimy husband Will Marsh (Reuben) and Fenella Dawnay as his affair (Evelyn).
The Stage Manager, who is highly competent in designing flexible stage-scenery, is Emma Black and the Production Manager is Louise Buckton, who had previously worked for The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Having said all this, the play is really worth seeing and extremely entertaining.
You would be a twat to miss it.

By Tanja Macht
Date:05.11.2009

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