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| Cold Comfort Farm |
As a result I found I was floundering in the early stages of the Company of Ten's production of an adaptation of the bucolic classic by Paul Doust.
It was clever, it was witty, but I was struggling to follow why the glamorous Flora Poste was at Cold Comfort Farm and quite how her role in the adaptation differed from the novel.
In the end though, it did not matter because the production, directed with a great sense of fun by David Goldman, won me over largely because of the excellent performance by Natalie Tidey as the aforementioned Flora.
It was always going to be a challenge staging Cold Comfort Farm as the action moves between the kitchen, the cowshed, a religious meeting place and a grand ballroom. Great credit is due to stage manager John Pyke and his team for a marvellous set which was transformed with minimum upheaval.
Flora makes her appearance in the kitchen looking like a fish out of water in her fashionable clothes with her upright bearing and jolly-hockey-sticks attitude to the country chaos in which she finds herself.
Natalie is absolutely delightful in the role which provides the thread which links everything which happens at Cold Comfort Farm. She is assured, sassy and totally unflappable as she deals with the family from hell.
Janette MacEwan as the matriarch Aunt Ada Doom - of "I saw something nasty in the woodshed" fame - takes her cue from the Julie Walters school of acting and could have been her in a poor light.
But she makes the role her own with her determination to keep her family at home, come what may, until she realises, with Flora's help, that there is something in it for her if she lets them go.
Julie Grant has little more to do than sob a lot as Judith Starkadder which is a bit of a waste of her talent but it was good to see David Widdowson - a stalwart of drama group OVO - on the Abbey Theatre stage as the licentious Seth Starkadder.
Mention also should be made of the versatility of Margot Jobbins as the crazy Rennet and the upper-crust Mrs Hawk-Monitor who flirts outrageously with Seth.
Cold Comfort Farm runs until Saturday at the Abbey Theatre in Westminster Lodge, St Albans, and tickets can be obtained from the box office on 01727 857861.
MADELEINE BURTON
© Herts Advertiser 2007. Reproduced by permission