Bentwater Roads: All In A Circle

Tuesday 1st June at 10am we amassed in an aptly ritualistic circle of chairs on the stage of Eastern Angles Theatre where we met the remainder of the cast including the sparkly eyed and ever ready with a joke Tony Scannell (Playing Mal, Carter and The Commander), who I still remember with adoration from watching The Bill with my grandparents every week night of my youth, and the numerous company members that make up Eastern Angles, including the writer, designers, director and associate director, stage managers, marketing officers and many more... Ivan Cutting the Artistic director of Eastern Angles and director of Bentwater Roads gave a quick introductory speech outlining the company's long held desire to use the Hush House at the old Airbase at Bentwater Roads for a site-specific piece of Theatre.

Crisp copies of the play were handed out and we had our first bash at reading the script out loud as a cast with Penny Griffin enthusiastically reading in the stage directions and everyone in the casting really bringing it to life. As always hearing it aloud added another dimension to the play that you never get reading at home on your own.

Keith Baker got up after the read through and talked us through his scaled version of the set which has managed to give the impression of the airfield, Randlesham Forest, Wantisden Church and the front room of Rose Cottage as well as containing a VW Campervan and possibly a pivoting raised platform to simulate a jet plane. Next were the sketches of our characters costumes. I was very pleased to see I'm going to be done up like Tom Cruise in Top Gun and the grey sack cloth garments of the Britons looked pretty flattering as well.

After this Eastern Angles put on a big welcoming Lunch and we all got to know each other even better over the quiche, cheese, sausage rolls and tea and coffee.

In the afternoon we headed to the nearby social club that would be our base for rehearsals over the next few weeks as the Eastern Angles Theatre is considerably smaller than the aircraft hanger we'll be performing in and it's also busy with different plays shifting in and out as part of Ipswich's vibrant Pulse Fringe Festival.

We gathered together round the script and read through the play a scene at a time and then fedback as a group on what we thought each scene was about and how it added to the play overall. It was immensely helpful that Tony Ramsey stayed with us through this process and offered us wonderful gems of information behind the different stories, characters and the transformation of the script. 

The story spans from Pagan Britain to modern day England, stopping off in the medieval ages and cold war era in between, not only does it encompass a wide chronology but the action is as far varying as the main character Charlie's delicate internal dealings of her suicidal mind coming to grips with the loss of her mother to the explosive spectacle of a pagan sacrifice. Something for everyone indeed...