Original Theatre continues to lead the way in Streamed content with their eleventh online production of the last year. This time it is a live staged reading of a radio play from the stage of the Oxford Playhouse Theatre with scripts in hand after a half-day of read-throughs and a day of technical rehearsal with the cameras. It might help that the marvellous three lead actors had all performed in it before in 2012 on the radio, although Anton Lesser admitted afterwards he did not remember that performance! Philip Franks directed the piece for the stream with a clever addition of an actress appearing as the ghost of Patricia, the Special Operations Executive operative captured by the Gestapo immediately as she landed in occupied France.
David Morley's script is based on real-life characters from the Second World War, the code breaker Leo Marks and the intelligence Officer Vera Atkins who reported to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster who headed the French section. He imagines a meeting fifty years after the war between them and a fictional character John Harrison who was captured in France and was held in German prisoner of war camps from July 1943 until liberation in April 1945. Harrison sent messages back to London from France which led to Patricia, who both Marks and Harrison love, being dropped into France.
The three actors wonderfully create the sense of guilt and revenge that the memories provoked by the meeting stir. David Jason is Harrison the elderly loveable character who survived the camps but whose memories are fuelled by whisky and provocation of the other two, so we see the layers gradually peeled back as to what really happened during the war. Stephanie Cole is the formidable Vera who after the war tracked down German officers and has a tunnel vision in search of the truth without any sense of how those before her are feeling. Anton Lesser is Theo, the guilt-ridden desk-bound officer whose job was to interpret the messages coming back from France and feed them into the planning by Buckmaster. Despite having scripts in hand, and occasional stumbles over the words, all three skillfully develop their characters and make the tension and revelations feel real.
Simply set against a cyclorama with artificial grass, garden furniture and a wisteria overhead with occasional birdsong in the background it creates a sense of a tranquil summer's day in a garden while off stage they are each interviewed for a documentary about the events they were involved in. It looked good with a strong clear sound and was well captured by North and South Culture.
It is a fascinating insight into the reality of wartime espionage but also the process by which actors feel their way into characters, digging out potatoes as Philip Frank calls it and a format that works well in the streamed world. Curiously, it is only available as a live stream but would surely work as an encore for anyone who missed it and wants an alternative to football on TV.
Review by Nick Wayne
Rating: ★★★★
Seat: Online stream with Q & A | Price of Ticket: £12
