Miss Lilly Gets Boned or The Loss of All Elephant Elders

Synopsis

Miss Lilly, a Sunday school teacher, has been waiting patiently for God to drop a man in her lap. When a new student - a young South African boy whose mother was killed by an elephant - disturbs the harmony of her classroom and his father disturbs the harmony of her heart, Miss Lilly is forced to re-examine her own sense of faith and self. Right or wrong, sinful or holy - a natural force is at work in Miss Lilly’s classroom where her hymns are accompanied by the rumble of angry elephants and her prayers are answered by a stranger to her god.

Our Review:

25 June 2010

Miss Lilly Gets Boned or The Loss of All Elephant Elders is a suitably cheeky title for this mischievous new play by Bekah Brunstetter. It is perhaps a tad dismissive too, with the elephant part of this piece feeling a little underbaked in the midst of Brunstetter’s Richard Curtis-inspired comedy.

This is not to say that the elephant himself is not represented imaginatively in Lily Bevan’s lively production; indeed ‘Harold’ is played with heavy majestic grace by James Russell to great and often moving effect. But it is frustrating that the questioning of the rise in elephant aggression which has inspired this piece eventually becomes subsumed under the light comedy patter that peppers Miss Lilly’s (Lorna Beckett) fall from grace.

And what a fall it is. Beginning as the archetypal, perky born again Christian, Lilly ends up ignored (seemingly deliberately) by her beloved Creator. Her encounter with Richard (a dashing [Will Kemp...

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