Cuckoo Teapot

Published Friday 22 February 2008 at 13:35 by Hugh Homan

Never has so much clomping up and down the noisy wooden slopes of a dreary set produced so little of interest.

Eastern Angles are in Burton-on-Trent in 1913 for their latest offering, Cuckoo Teapot. Kate Griffin’s lacklustre plot has grandma and her brother hotfooting it from Norfolk to Staffordshire to find out why 15-year-old Joseph has joined the ‘Norkies’ (labourers from Norfolk who went to work in the breweries). That Joseph and the girl he meets are brother and sister brought up by their respective grandmothers in ignorance of one another is supposed to add an extra 21st century frisson to the 19th century shenanigans.

Episodic in the extreme, the story demands that the poor players ‘sleep’ on stage for 45 seconds, race up and down the aforementioned wooden slopes as they search around the town and occasionally drop through a hatchway into a barge.

The players do what they can. Tim Bell essays a Norfolk twang as Joseph and captures the character’s endearing naivety. Bryony Harding is Emily, the girl he finds up north. More knowing and cunning than Jo, she vividly suggests the woman in embryo. Graham Howes plays the unmarried brother who attempts to rescue his wilful, God-fearing sister from herself. He also takes on several other solid male characters, all to creditable effect.

The two grandmothers are played by Helen Grady and Jackie Redgewell. They have one long speech together about forgiveness which is touching and creates a mood that is missing in the rest of the play.

After the witty inventiveness of Angles’ Christmas offering Cuckoo Teapot is a great disappointment.