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Just the Beginning by Sarah Bennett #Ewview #HalfmoonQuay#PublicationDay

  I have been eagerly awaiting this new series by Sarah Bennett . Just the Beginning is published today by Boldwood Books !   Everyone in Halfmoon Quay, the picture-perfect village clinging to the edge of the Cornish coast, knows Rick Penrose is the person to turn to for help. Friendly and reliable, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, he’ll do anything for anyone. When his teenage crush Anya moves back to the quay for a fresh start, he has the perfect solution. She needs a job and his great uncle needs help to run his hotel. It’s a win-win. Following the death of her husband, Anya Stokes discovered everything about her life was a lie. Without her beautiful home and the luxuries she took for granted, Anya and her daughter, Freya, have no choice but to move in with her aunt and uncle in Halfmoon Quay. As she begins to turn her life around, Anya realises the perfect man might have been right under her nose all the time. But there’s a fine line between helping and taking ov...

Play: Husbands and Sons by D H Lawrence, adapted by Ben Power

Performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester and directed by Marianne Elliott. 





                                     A co-production with the National Theatre.


    Husbands and Sons takes us to the mining villages where D H Lawrence was brought up and has been created by merging three separate plays : A Collier’s Friday Night, The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Daughter-in-Law.They were not originally written to be seen together and DH Lawrence did not in fact ever see them staged.The result is a look into a whole mining community, in 1911. 

    We are presented with the stories of three different mining families: The Lamberts, Gascoignes and the Holroyds. The staging allows us to see the community as a whole with different areas of the stage given over to each family. The mine itself is ever present with a huge metal frame which is lowered and raised to signify the mine. As the miners walk through the mist across the stage, it is possible to imagine them coming up into the daylight from the dusty depths below.

    In each household are waiting the women of the house. Minnie Gascoigne, newly married to Lucas, has filled her house with more genteel touches. Unfortunately for her, the presence of her mother-in -law looms large over her son. Lydia Lambert is awaiting the arrival of her student son, who she idolises at the expense of her husband. Lizzie Holroyd is torn between her errant husband and an attentive suitor.  

    Although three hours in length, the play moved smoothly on and the three families gave the evening a sense of momentum as the focus moved amongst them. I enjoyed the use of mime to show the ritual of donning hats and coats, which seems to punctuate each family's area. All the domestic activities of eating, washing, dressing served to underpin the enclosed atmosphere within each house and separate them from the mine outside, as each family played out their own power struggle.

In short: an almost claustrophobic look at the tensions within a tight mining community.     

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