I knew nothing about this play or the Company but being a reviewer allowed me the opportunity to pick a beguiling show with an attractive title. I’m so glad I did. Headway Arts are based in Blyth and are a “participatory” company that welcomes actors and helpers from everywhere with no distinction made for disability. That might mean you don’t get a 45 minute soliloquy with pin sharp diction echoing with deadly delivery but instead we saw a communal storytelling of players collaborating to tell an allegory of humanity. This could have be done around a dusty market place in Tashkent as easily as an upper room in a pub in Byker and the audience would join in and laugh along there just as we did here. Then feel better afterwards, their humanity healed a bit. So drama beguiles us.
Headway certainly beguiled and included us, the audience in their participatory production as they told jokes, did magic tricks, sang songs and paraded through the room. The company of actors obviously had a lovely time with ad-libs and smiles aplenty, and as they did, we the audience joined in with the fun. The story of the countess’s lost pearls with a cool and deadly blues guitar soundtrack was secondary to the real lessons of what people can be if we give ourselves the chance. These wonderful and talented people show humanity at its most playful and their joy of innocent kindness teaches us more than any conventional production which might campaign or declaim.
In the question and answer session afterwards they reinforced the specific interests that each actor brought to the show, and the freedom they had to do that – the 4th Doctor (Who?) was mentioned with the conjuring. But this play encapsulated the brave spirit of joyful resistance to mere circumstance and the company’s determination to participate in what makes life good cheered me up after all the news we’re hearing all the time. They showed the value of people. All of the people. May they prosper.
Bill Corcoran saw Café Bohème at the Cumberland on 23 July.
A Newcastle Fringe review. There’s still a lot going on!
