Farm Boy

Synopsis

It sometimes felt as though time had stood still down on the family farm - swallows nesting in the eaves, the old Fordson tractor quietly rusting at the back of the barn, Grandpa still tending his chickens - that is, until the Summer his grandson finished school and came to stay, and the old man started telling stories of what it had been like on the farm when he was a boy.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 23 October 2010

On a bare stage there are two actors – one young and one older – a piece of farm equipment, a chair and, of course, the words which tell the story. Yet it held the Watford audience (children of all ages as well as their elders) spellbound for over an hour. The story in question is Farm Boy by Michael Morpurgo in a stage adaptation by Daniel Buckroyd for Scamp and New Perspectives theatre companies.

Morpurgo’s War Horse is the prequel to this tale. Joey the horse and his young master Albert have returned to the Devon farm after the end of the First World War. But it’s not the same; rhythms of work unchanged for millennia ar giving way to mechanisation; the tractor has arrived. Three generations down the line, a young city lad spends time with his grandfather before going on his gap year. He’s planning to study engineering at university and a rusting 1920s tractor in the old man’s barn excites his curiosity. How did it get ther...

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