Town

Synopsis

On John’s return to Northampton from the bright lights of London, he finds his hometown is exactly the same as when he left it - from the rooms at his parent’s house, to the Saturday nights on Abington Street. In fact, the only thing that seems to have changed... is John. Slipping back into his old habits, old jobs and old relationships, John considers the reasons why his urge to come back took him on a sixty mile walk North, from the anonymity of corporate city life, to the comfort of home.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 22 June 2010

In 1841, the mad poet John Clare began a four-day walk from an asylum in Epping Forest back home to Northamptonshire. That journey, or at least the idea of re-rooting oneself in one’s native background, is the template for Town, DC Moore’s contemporary parable of readjustment.

Mark Rice-Oxley’s gentle, vulnerable John returns to Northampton on the verge of a breakdown, having thrown up his job in insurance, slept rough, survived by shop-lifting and resumed his old job among the dado rails, rawl plugs and light bulbs of Home Base.

He sees friends and family with new eyes. His parents (Fred Pearson and Karen Archer) are moulded to their sitting room chairs, still scarred by the death of John’s baby sister. His old school friend Anna (Joanna Horton) becomes the agent of his rebirth and rehabilitation, while the teenaged Mary (Natalie Klamar), who’s never been anywhere, takes him on a drunken binge in the urban jungle.

Esther Richardson’s intense 90-m...

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