The Winslow Boy -
part of the 50th anniversary season
Playwright - Terence Rattigan
Director - Clive Perry
Designer - Adrian Rees
Costume Designer - Jane Stuart Brown
Lighting Designer - Mark Pritchard
Company - Pitlochry Theatre Company
Venue - Pitlochry Festival Theatre www.pitlochry.org.uk 01796
484626 accessible by rail, bus and by car about 2hrs from centre of
Edinburgh.
Dates - see listings for details Runs in rep with other plays,
season ends 13 October 2001
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Directed meticulously by Clive Perry, magnificently set and costumed
Pitlochry's The Winslow Boy brings out all the richness and depth of
Rattigan's characters and their story. Truth and Justice are not the
same things, and this illuminating play's themes resonates with current
court cases and bureaucratic bungles.
First seen in 1946, it's based on a father's attempts to clear his young
son from a charge of petty theft and progresses from letters in the
newspapers, to questions in the House of Commons to the trial itself.
Every scene is set in a well appointed Kensington drawing room in time
spanning the last few years before WW1. Then in Britain, bureaucracy
and form were starting to overwhelm the individualism of the highly
creative Victorian times. Steven Kynman appears as Ronnie the
troubled, maligned boy of the title, Kynman is movingly, wholly inside
the skin of the boy expelled by the Naval Academy for theft of a mere
5/- postal order he say he never took. Alice Fraser is his mother
wise and warm who swanlike glides in and out in beautiful clothes and
hats whilst underneath she has to struggle with deep emotions to keep
her place in the swim. Mr Winslow, played with integrity by David
Macmillan, never doubts his son, his will strong while his body
weakens under the strain.
Also in the family home is Dickie the elder brother dancing the Bunny
Hug and not really studying, engagingly and finely played by Matthew
Chambers. Dickie's with his family though bemused by the fuss over
5/-, you suspect he gets away with a bit more at Oxford before economics
make him leave his student ways! The terrific Amanda Beveridge
is the suffragist sister Kate who draws the line at criminal damage
for her cause, using her New Woman strength and intelligence to great
effect. Janet Michael scrubs down as another vivid servant, this
time a Cockney orphan Violet. Taken in 23 years ago for a Tweeny, (between
stairs maid) who graduated to parlourmaid but never recognises her place,
Violet marvellously holds the floor especially when she returns with
news of the trial. Into the household in Act Two comes Sir Richard Morton,
Martyn James, an MP and legal personality, avuncular and dry
who takes command of the case in a superbly paced interrogation of Ronnie.
Outstanding acting,direction and design come together to make this a
very strong production which echoes interestingly with another Pitlochry
play this season with some of the same cast, J.M. Barrie's The
Admirable Crichton
© Thelma Good 4 July 2001
Janet Michael as Violet in Pitlochry's The Winslow Boy
© Keith Brame 2001
Martyn James as Sir Robert Morton in Pitlochry's The Winslow Boy
© Keith Brame 2001