Candleford - Lark Rise to Candleford

Synopsis

It is dawn on a winter's day in 1890 in rural Oxfordshire. The blacksmiths sing and joke as they fire up in the forge, the post office workers gossip and grumble sorting the mail. Young Laura goes out in the snow on her first delivery...The hunt arrives on the green...We see life as it was lived in England over a century ago recreated in...Candleford.

Our Review:

3 October 2005

We're obviously in a bit of a retro phase at present. Having just welcomed back a revamped Hair, here's a more or less untouched `golden oldie' from 1978 and Bill Bryden's tenure at the National's Cottesloe Theatre. Bryden then was on a roll. Under his stewardship and a famously loyal ensemble, promenading became all the rage. Out of it came The Mysteries and this gentle evocation with the unforgettable folk music of John Tams and the Albion Band, of farming life in 19th century rural England.

Lark Rise to Candleford, adapted by Keith Dewhurst from Flora Thompson's popular trilogy into two parts, Lark Rise and Candleford, told the story of Thompson's memories of growing up in a quiet Oxfordshire village before the Great War. As such it's a story of a forgotten way of being and whilst Lark Rise at least (Candleford joins this week) boasts little of the darkness that makes Synge's I...

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Latest User Review

Heather McNiven - 5 October 2010:

I don't know which play this reviewer saw- but I watched Larkrise to Candleford at the Theatre Royal Brighton last night. A lacklustre performance with no plot. Anyone who thought it would be as entertaining as the tv production was sorely disappointed. It drifted through the evening with sloooooooooooow dialogue and as with other theatres-some of the audience left at the interval. If I hadn't been so close to the stage I would have left too but was embarrassed for the actors feelings! ...

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