Carrie's War

Synopsis

Carrie's War is based on the best-selling book by Nina Bawden. Carrie Willow and her brother Nick are evacuees transported to the safety of the countryside in the 1940s. There they stay with mean Mr Evans; but there’s also kind Auntie Lou, and Mr Johnny, who speaks his own language, and Hepzibah, the witch at Druid’s Grove who makes a perfect apple pie, and young Albert Sandwich, who kisses Carrie on her twelfth birthday. And then there’s the ancient skull with its terrifying curse...

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 7 September 2010

With the 70th anniversary of the Blitz somewhere in the forefront of British minds, this tour for the stage version of Nina Bawden’s novel seems particularly appropriate. Emma Reeves’s adaptation has required a large cast, some good singing voices – we are after all in rural Wales – and a flexible use by director Andrew Loudon of Edward Lipscomb’s multi-level set.

There are some very good performances, so that the stage convention of adult actors playing quite young children seems perfectly natural as (30 years later) the grown-up Carrie revisits the village to which she and her brother were evacuated and then (with the actor playing her son doubling as her young brother Nick) translates into the young girl sent away from home so suddenly. Sarah Edwardson and James Byng are both excellent at both ages.

A heartbreaking study of a young man whose distorted body is so erroneously taken to indicate a fractured mind is provided by [J...

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