Red Sky At Sunrise is a touring show that utilises the words of Laurie Lee, the English writer who became famous for his depiction of life in rural Gloucestershire, Cider With Rosie, and his subsequent volumes of autobiography.
By Miles Salter
Feature photo by Lucy Barriball (taken at the RSC)
Lee’s words were read by Anton Lesser (Game of Thrones) and Charlie Hamblett (Killing Eve). Snippets of Lee’s work were interspersed with music from Orchestra of The Swan, eight musicians who majored on stringed instruments including violin, cello, harp and classical guitar.
As good as the musicians were, it was a shame that the show placed too much emphasis on the music. Lee was foremost a writer, observer and capable of masterful descriptions. I recently re-read As I Walked Out One Summer Morning and marvelled at his powers of description. It is one of the great travelogues of the last hundred years. The show did not do justice to the writer and man of words. Cider With Rosie was dispensed with in about fifteen minutes before moving on to the Spanish adventures. We needed less music and more words.
Modern theatre has to be palatable to an ageing, middle class audience. It has to be nice. This was nice. Alongside pieces by Holst and Vaughan Williams, we got Greensleeves and Danny Boy – charged with romance and sentimentality, music that maintains a misty-eyed look at a past that might not have been as good as we thought it was. (‘Wasn’t life great when we had Ricketts?’ Jasper Carrot once said, mocking our taste for looking backwards.) The musicianship was of an exemplary standard but the whole show avoided the word ‘challenging’, and I think Charlie Hamblett knew it. Nothing in the show was taxing for the audience. The section of Cider With Rosie where a gang of boys plan an (aborted) gang rape of a girl is ignored, although the show does include Lee feeling guilty for killing a man in the Spanish Civil War, an act he sees as ultimately futile.
Lee lived until 1997, nearly sixty years after the Spanish Civil War, but all his published output came relatively early in his life. The show briefly nodded its head to the older Lee, responding to teenage girls in Slad asking where the author’s grave is. In a sense, the fire of his early years was replaced with something far less exciting, drinking through his days in The Woolpack in Slad (in the Cotswolds). I’d like to have seen the show have an exchange between younger Lee and older Lee, reflecting on a life that didn’t fulfil its potential. That said, both Hamblett and Anton Lesser were excellent with Lee’s superb words. They deserved a greater share of the applause, which rang out in response to the occasionally soporific music.
Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. He leads the band Miles and The Chain Gang and co-hosts the York Calling podcast.
Red Sky At Sunrise was performed at the Grand Opera House, York on Sunday 26 May 2024.
