Chloe Kenward Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★½

“sets up an interesting space for boundaries to be transgressed”

Five perimenopausal women trek into the Welsh woods to scatter the ashes of their mutual friend Mei, an all-too-young victim of cervical cancer. Each knows her from a different stage in her life – there’s a friend from nursery, one from university, from work, from her children’s school, and her sister-in-law. They are as different from each other as the contexts in which they met Mei, but predictably come together in the night of camping and carousing that makes up most of director Emma Gersch’s ‘Kindling’. Equal parts chaotic and joyful, this play fails to live up to its promising premise.

A thick layer of leaves and a few saplings fill the stage, with a large photograph of an autumnal forest as its backdrop. Abi Groves’ set is effective while not exactly imaginative, though it comes alive as the disjointed group of women flood the scene with their belongings – bags of distinctly varying types, a camping chair, string lights, a single tent, the all-important urn perched on a tree stump. The stage feels rather full, though this is not down to the set so much as the almost constant clumsiness that inexplicably plagues the characters that inhabit it, who are always stomping about, sighing, and fussing with wine glasses and blankets and maps.

Dissimilar as they are, the characters are all restless, big personalities, each based on time-honoured archetypes: vegetarian hippie Cathy (played by a particularly funny Scarlett Alice Johnson), savvy lesbian Jules (Stacy Abalogun), perfect housewife Jasmin (Rendah Beshoori), posh party girl Sue (Ciara Pouncett), and frazzled mum Rose (Sarah Rickman). Refreshingly, and true to the ethos of Ladybird Productions at large, we meet these women at a somewhat later age than we have encountered them before, but they are familiar faces nevertheless. The actors have good chemistry, but why the late Mei ever thought that sending these characters on a commemorative trip together would turn them into friends remains a mystery, as (despite what the plot tells us) they fail to genuinely connect in spite of their obvious differences.

One issue that contributes to this is the aforementioned restlessness that runs through the play, and finds its source in Sarah Rickman’s script. Not only are there almost constantly five women on stage at the same time, who rarely actually sit down to have a chat altogether, there is also a flurry of things happening: there’s a big thunderstorm, Rose almost chokes to death and later finds her dog in the woods, Jasmin gets shat on by a bird and accidentally kills it, and Mei’s ashes end up in someone’s hair and then everyone’s coffee, among other things. Kindling bundles all the worst camping horror stories you’ve ever heard into an hour and a half and, as such, becomes frustratingly one-note, with little room for the different emotions grief conjures. Additionally, many of the play’s jokes feel disconnected from its subject matter and some of the dialogue borders on cliché (‘But my nails!’, Jasmin exclaims, and ‘You know what, I’ve not laughed like this in ages’, says Jules).

That being said, the second act was much more streamlined than the first. The group’s conclusion that Mei was perhaps a bit of a narcissist was an interesting twist, though I wished that this realisation had dawned upon her friends more gradually and naturally than it did, and that the potential consequences of this insight had been made to feel more urgent.

In taking the bizarre premise of an ash-scattering, rowdy camping trip, Kindling sets up an interesting space for boundaries to be transgressed, unlikely friendships to be forged, and breakthroughs to be had. But unfortunately, its potential gets lost in the chaos.

Cratchit

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 9th December 2021

★★★

“Dagleish is a genial, amusing Cratchit, winning the audience over with a jaunty charm”

Barring the actual nativity scene, A Christmas Carol is probably the best known seasonal story, not just in its original literary form, but also as a Muppet, a Donald Duck, the inimitable Michael Cain Christmas Carol of course. The same story every time, the same wholesome message of kindness and generosity of spirit. And unless you’re trying to entertain a bunch of kids, it gets a bit tired.

So it’s not a bad idea at all to mix it up and tell the story from a different angle. Writer and director Alex Knott has seemingly gone for a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern vibe, telling the story from the perspective of Bob Cratchit (John Dagleish), Scrooge’s hard-done-by employee and father of tiny Tim. Already suffering a very tight belt this Christmas Eve, Cratchit finds himself, through little fault of his own, owing money he doesn’t have to a couple of criminals.

In a moment of wretched despair he decides it’d be best for his family if he weren’t around to make matters worse. He tries to hang himself, but slips and falls into the frozen river, where he meets three spirits sent to give him a message.

Given that Scrooge is so close by- literally only next door to Cratchit’s cold, meagre office- I was hoping for a bit of story cross-over, maybe catching a glimpse of Scrooge’s own spiritual journey that evening, or perhaps adding something clever to the well-known plot. Instead ‘Cratchit’ is a kind of shadow of the same plot with a bit stolen from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.

Except that the message is a little garbled too. Rather than showing an alternate reality, the three spirits take Cratchit into the future, first showing him the second Industrial Revolution, people enslaved in furnace-hot factories. Next, we’re transported to Christmas Day in WW1, lads playing football and singing hymns on no-man’s land. We take a trip through glittering ‘80s Soho, finally landing in our present plague-ridden day, and moving a little further into the future, where we meet Cratchit’s great-great-grandchild, or thereabouts, who’s doing very well indeed. This isn’t a subjunctive future, it’s just exactly what’s going to happen, so why is Cratchit being shown it? Apparently to show him that if you “live long enough, there must be reward for every man.” This is supposed to be the big heart-warming Christmas message: that his life and the life of his children and grandchildren and even great grandchildren might be torturous and near impossible to bear, but one day, someone in that long line might be allowed a little happiness. This seems deeply depressing to me. It also takes forever to work out what the point is.

Emil Bestow’s staging is simple but fairly effective. A criss-cross of wooden slats lays against the back of the stage, housing a few nestled lanterns and sitting in a pile of snow. This is most effective in the blue-black light of a cold winter’s night, when Cratchit is walking home, the warm glow of the lanterns in stark contrast to the bitter cold. Cratchit’s work desk serves as a general prop- something to sit and climb on, to move around and bang with an angry clenched fist. It’s a bit lacklustre in its most anachronistic moments- sitting in the middle of a battlefield, or in the middle of a Soho nightclub- but it serves its purpose.

Dagleish is a genial, amusing Cratchit, winning the audience over with a jaunty charm. His character could do with a bit more meat, but he makes do. Freya Sharp does her best to play all the parts Dagleish can’t. Her facial expressions carry her, bringing a lot of physical comedy into what are generally quite surface parts.

I feel I’ve said this quite a lot recently, but it needs to be at least fifteen minutes shorter- there’s an especially long rant about how awful Scrooge is which could definitely be chopped in half, and there’s a weird Christmas feast hallucination-type scene on the battlefield that I didn’t really understand at all, and which didn’t appear to add anything to the story.

All in all it makes for an entertaining evening if you’re already in the jolly spirit and looking for something festive to hang it on (no pun intended). But through a cynical un-christmasy eye it doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

KINDLING

Park Theatre

★★½

“sets up an interesting space for boundaries to be transgressed”

KINDLING

Park Theatre

Reviewed on 27th October 2025

by Lola Stakenburg

Photography by Holly Darville

Previously reviewed at this venue:

KINDLING

KINDLING

KINDLING

Park Theatre

Reviewed – 9th December 2021

★★★

“Dagleish is a genial, amusing Cratchit, winning the audience over with a jaunty charm”

In a moment of wretched despair he decides it’d be best for his family if he weren’t around to make matters worse. He tries to hang himself, but slips and falls into the frozen river, where he meets three spirits sent to give him a message.

All in all it makes for an entertaining evening if you’re already in the jolly spirit and looking for something festive to hang it on (no pun intended). But through a cynical un-christmasy eye it doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Charles Flint

Cratchit

Park Theatre until 7th January

Previously reviewed at this venue this year:

JOIN US