Badapple Theatre toured village halls last year with this agreeable dramatisation of Women’s Land Army tales and this year the tour is much extended. Taking plays to remote communities is rewarding and appreciated, especially when the material is new. The arrival of a professional theatre company is always an event.
Samantha Edwards and Abigail Uttley play land army girls. Each is called Elizabeth, which adds curiosity to a plot line, but they use nicknames throughout. Edwards is Buff, a Liverpudlian, and Uttley is Biddy, a Yorkshire girl. The lone male, Colin Moncrieff, appears on snatches of integrated black and white film as an apparently fanciable Italian prisoner of war.
The two girls are encumbered, poor lambs, with much prolonged and tiresome scenery changing. It is attempted in half light and is not managed smoothly. Indeed, it is hard work and gives some of the acting a breathless nature. That said Edwards and Uttley have an engaging spirit and they are at ease with the many comic incidents. Their material has been taken from actual recollections and much of it is revealing. The craving for food, getting close to cows for the first time, the surprise at seeing lights on the first night of peace.
The plot line of one of them becoming famous as a singer, then returning to the village where they spent their war years is interesting but could be dismissed as superfluous. That one of the girls sings at a local VE Day concert is enough. The small, personal details work best.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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