Goodnight Mister Tom, Phoenix, London

Published Wednesday 28 November 2012 at 10:31 by Susan Elkin

Originally staged at Chichester Festival Theatre last year and then toured, this show has matured and developed. A 1940s wartime reworking of the Silas Marner story in which a battered, abused evacuee and a curmudgeonly old man, who has been shut away by grief for 40 years, are thrown together. Love, based on kindness, gradually develops between Tom Oakley (Oliver Ford Davies) and Willie Beech (Ewan Harris at the press performance) and they heal each other.

Ford Davies plays Tom as a man with dignified common sense and it?s a treat to hear him working in an r-rolling Dorset accent instead of the voice he normally uses for archbishops and other figured of educated authority. Ewan Harris gives a moving, thoughtful account of the initially terrified, later more relaxed Willie especially in the scenes when he is summoned back to London by his deeply troubled, double-thinking, cruel, irrational mother, nicely played by Aoife McMahon. William Price (one of three boys in the role) is a delight as the ebullient, irrepressible Zach. Sammy the full size dog, who snuffles, whines, paws and woofs, is engagingly puppeted by Elisa de Grey.

There are some pretty weepy episodes in this well-paced show but it stops short of sentimentality, confronting as it does death, both natural and otherwise, child abuse and religious intolerance without being didactic and including lots of witty bits and fine ensemble work. Few people will forget the moment when Ford Davies is in a London air raid shelter en route to find Willy. The shelter is full but there is complete stillness and no sound except the rumble of bombs overhead and Sammy?s puzzled, distressed whimpering. Dramatic magic.

Production information

Phoenix, London, November 27-January 26

Author:

Michelle Magorian, adapted by David Wood

Director:

Angus Jackson

Producers:

Fiery Angel, Ambassador Theatre Group, Fiery Dragons, The Children's Touring Partnership

Cast includes:

Oliver Ford Davies, Louise Collins, Elisa de Grey, Emma Drysdale, Bradley Hall, Joanne Howarth, Aoife McMahon, Freya Parker. Georgina Sutton, Alan Vicary, Jonathan Warde, Osmund Bullock

Running time:

2hrs

Production information can change over the run of the show.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheStageReviews/~3/DhXk7OQt7W0/goodnight-mister-tom

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