★★★★

“Liz Elvin doesn’t give us theatrical fireworks, but something much more subtle and involving”

What has been described as ‘the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history’ is the focus of this interesting new play by Zannah Kearns. It is drawn from Nick Wallis’ seminal 2021 exposé of the Post Office Horizon scandal. It tells the story up to 2019, when after a joint legal action, over 500 Postmasters and Postmistresses were granted a settlement of £58 million.

The play was commissioned by the University of Reading and was developed with help from their Law Department. It is performed by Reading’s RABBLE Theatre which has a special remit to ‘tell local stories of national significance’. Playwright Kearns based her story on her interviews with one Post Mistress called Pam Stubbs who modestly says she ‘got really cross’ when she first noticed false transactions on the screen of the branch she was running from a Portakabin near Reading.

A cast of four include seasoned performer Elizabeth Elvin as Pam Stubbs. Stubbs was unique amongst the other litigants in that she kept meticulous records which enabled the Horizon system to be directly challenged. Liz Elvin doesn’t give us theatrical fireworks, but something much more subtle and involving. We see a mild-mannered woman who is genuinely puzzled by the total and catastrophic upending of her life because the Post Office stubbornly refused to admit their software was faulty.

Laura Penneycard, Sabina Netherclift and Fayez Baksh deftly take multiple roles as customers, shop assistant, barrister, judge and other litigants. The play is performed in a ‘black box’ space for which Caitlin Abbott has designed a set of wheeled units which are moved around by the cast.

From ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to TV’s ‘Crown Court’, court room scenes are bread and butter drama. ‘Glitch’ features some gripping moments drawn directly from the legal transcript. For me, some of the other writing and direction by Gemma Colcough and Gareth Taylor still has a somewhat sketchy quality about it. I wanted a little more drama and less understatement, even if some of it (say) came in the form of techniques like projected graphics.

The founders of RABBLE describe this show as ‘stage one’ for the piece. They hope that with more financial support it will evolve more fully. This worthwhile and involving play certainly deserves a much wider showing.

ACCOLADE at the Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★½

“a grand revival that entertains and chills in equal measure”

“We all have one thing we’re ashamed of. Even the judge has, who’ll be peering at you over his glasses, making you feel like dirt. His secret may be the nastiest of the lot. Only you have committed the sin of being found out…”

The Theatre Royal has taken a bold decision with this revival of Emlyn Williams’ 1950 drama about a Nobel prize winning author with an addiction to sleazy sex. A knighthood from the king is about to propel William Trenting into the very heart of the establishment. But as his acquiescent wife knows, down at the Blue Lion in Rotherhithe he’s plain Bill Trent ‘the tramp’ who has a penchant for regular orgies.

The set is an immaculately brown period re-creation by Julie Godfrey who also designed the costumes. But how relevant to today’s audience is the moral anguish of 75 years ago? The answer is that accents and social mores may change but human fallibility does not. ‘Accolade’ sharply echoes recent sexual scandals involving any number of contemporary high profile individuals.

And although the plot relates the story of a man accused of sex with an underage girl, there are LGBT undercurrents. Emlyn Williams was bisexual throughout his adult life and took the lead at the show’s first production.

Director Sean Mathias has taken some imaginative decisions in both casting and design. Ayden Callaghan (Emmerdale and Hollyoaks) opens the show encased in something like a giant test tube which seems to symbolise the punishing glare of public scrutiny to which his character is about to be exposed. In this central role, his low-key performance was uneasily at odds with the rest of the cast. His Trenting does not belong in this sophisticated middle class world. But this is a provocative play of uneasy opposites. Public and private lives. Adults and minors. The establishment and the rest of us. In a telling line, Trenting admits that he is ‘growing up in front of my own son’.

Honeysuckle Weeks sparkles as Trenting’s compliantly loving wife Rona. As Trenting’s son, Louis Holland gives an engaging performance, literally drawing a veil across the scene in what seems to be a vain attempt to hide his family’s private drama from our gaze. Holland plays a bookish and privately educated 14 year old, in a pointed parallel to the child victim of Trenting’s philandering.

The sound design by David Gregory was particularly effective. Jamie Hogarth gives an intriguing performance as Albert, Trenting’s secretary with a dodgy past the author managed to pick up in a pub. Narinder Samra is terrific as Trenting’s insinuating blackmailer. Williams’ writing is peppered with witticisms, but very much of its time. Sara Twomey and Gavin Fowler give colourful performances as the cheery proprietors of the Blue Lion pub, who slip gleefully into Trenting’s posh home life.

GLITCH at the Minghella Theatre

★★★★

“Liz Elvin doesn’t give us theatrical fireworks, but something much more subtle and involving”

GLITCH at the Minghella Theatre

Reviewed on 2nd July 2024

by David Woodward

Photography by Annabel Crichard

Recommended Show reviews from June:

GLITCH

GLITCH

ACCOLADE at the Theatre Royal Windsor

★★★½

“a grand revival that entertains and chills in equal measure”

ACCOLADE at the Theatre Royal Windsor as part of UK Tour

Reviewed on 6th June 2024

by David Woodward

Photography by Jack Merriman

Previously reviewed at this venue:

ACCOLADE

ACCOLADE