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NEW FARNHAM REPERTORY Actors' Company |
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Racing Demon - reviews |
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What the press said about NFRC's Racing Demon
"Racing Demon is impeccably performed" Farnham Herald "This production is worthy of national attention" "Performances here are universally superb." |
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Links: Jane Eyre: - Review Racing demon: - Reviews Previous seasons with the NFRC
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From the Basingstoke Gazette, 3 November 2005:
Don't miss superb act
It’s not often that you experience a perfect union between location and play, but that’s exactly the situation in Farnham.
David Hare’s Racing Demon, the first in his State of the Nation trilogy, exposes the deep hypocrisies and power struggles within the church.
And it’s being performed nightly within the beautiful walls of St. Andrew’s Church, giving the actors, who play conflicted members of the clergy, an opportunity to promenade in a building which is at the core of the issues raised in the wonderful script.
Every part in the play offers something meaty for its actor, and director David Roylance has done a superb job guiding it all, aided by his great cast of professionals.
We begin as the Rev Lionel Espy (David Gooderson) bursts through the doors, voicing his exasperation. As the man who has the daily responsibilities of a parish wearing him down, he works alongside Rev Harry Henderson (William Whymper), whose personal life is about to be exposed by a newspaper, and gentle Rev Donald Bacon (Maurice Thorogood), affectionately known as “Streaky”.
Their routines, however, are interrupted by the arrival of Rev Tony Ferris (Simon Cole), whose youthful conviction and disdain for Lionel’s modus operandi brings the higher authority of the bishop to bear on the situation.
Performances here are universally superb, with even the smallest roles communicating completely with the audience - particularly Sharon Hinds’ troubled Stella.
This production is worthy of national attention, so completely does it expose what Hare intended and impress upon the audience the turmoils of its very individual characters.
If you can get to Farnham before Saturday you won’t be sorry. Joanne Mace
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From the Farnham Herald 4 November 2005:
Power (and glory) for NFRC’s production of Racing Demon
HERE is one production that would be a sin to miss. Racing Demon is impeccably performed in Farnham’s St Andrew’s Church by the New Farnham Repertory Company. It takes its audience on an emotional roller coaster in an ideal setting for a play that examines the crisis facing the Church of England in the early 1990s and which is still relevant today.
Clever use has been made of the large, modernised interior of Farnham’s old parish church where the actors have enough scope to move around using the chancel, aisle, rear stage and new mezzanine floor for the many changes of scene. Slightly shocking, yet moving and dramatic, are the personal dialogues, or prayers, directed at God, and delivered while facing the altar.
David Hare’s award-winning Racing Demon, the first in his state-of-the nation trilogy, is a remarkably interesting and articulate play that uses its characters to develop a debate that will lock the audience in, swaying them first one way and then the other.
Hare, an important political playwright, knows that nobody in the modern world stands firmly on the moral high ground and that every position has some persuasive legitimacy, as well as some dreadful cost, both to the individual and to society.
NFRC’s new director for this production, David Roylance, has fine-tuned each and every aspect of the play and its characters to ensure his audience absorbs not only the words and feelings evoked by the plot and players, but also the drama in such a setting.
“God where are you? Talk to me God!” are the opening words cried out in anguish by the play’s pivotal character, the Reverend Lionel Espy. Silence. An apathetic and ineffectual husband, father and leader of an inner-city ministry, he isn’t sure whether he really believes in the power of prayer; he can only offer kindly platitudes to his parishioners.
NFRC veteran David Gooderson, has brought his own dimensions to this role and gives his best and most inspired performance to date, and Helen Dorward is simply wonderful as his neglected, yet totally supportive, poor little wife.
Simon Cole, another of NFRC’s talented actors, has a lean and hungry look well suited to Espy’s manic curate, Tony, whose evangelical zeal measures the church’s effectiveness by number crunching, using vulgar promotional campaigns to get bums on pews.
He rails against his leader’s inactivity as does the hard-nosed Bishop of Southwark (Richard Franklin), who wants to terminate Espy’s contract if he does not play by the rules. But then Espy’s lacklustre services and left-wing sermons have upset a local MP. Church and state are held together by mere “dental floss” and must not be frayed by a minor cleric.
Team-mates and fellow priests, wacky Donald “Streaky” Bacon and intellectual Harry Henderson, do their bit to plead Espy’s case with the slick, fast-talking Bishop of Kingston (Andrew Wincott), although when it comes to the crunch, the ageing cleric is not such a pushover as they all imagined.
“Streaky” Bacon is a great part for lanky Maurice Thorogood, who plays full-on for laughs without losing any of the character’s charm, or the innocence of his uncomplicated faith.
William Whymper is also quite splendid as the gentle academic Henderson, whose closet homosexuality and restrained love for a young out-of-work actor (Nick Cooper) are threatened by a sleazy tabloid journalist (Nigel Morley).
Penelope Woodman’s powerful and moving performance as Francis Parnell is like a breath of fresh air amid the warring clerics. Francis is a strong-minded atheist from a Christian family,
who likes justice better than God and is kicked out of the born-again curate’s bed once he sees his sexual activities as sinful. Sex is getting in the way of his God-given mission, whether it’s the betrayal of Espy or the religious hounding of a battered wife, played by Sharon Hinds.
Every character, central or supportive, is masterfully drawn by the author and and convincingly portrayed by the actors. It raises many questions but gives few answers in the final analysis.
“Feed my sheep” demands the formidable bishop, but where, when and how is a very real dilemma for the disconnected pastors of a dispirited church. Sue Cansfield
Links:
Jane Eyre:
- Review
Racing demon:
- Reviews
Previous seasons with the NFRC