Once Upon A Lifetime, Insuffolk

Once Upon a Lifetime, Jon Tavener's exploration of memory, is a love story compiled from the recollections of over fifty residents from five Suffolk Care Homes which have been gently twisted into a single narrative thread.

With the exception of the opening scene when we are introduced to Sid, a D-Day veteran who plans to attend the commemoration in France against the advice of his doctor, the love story of Sid and Hetty, or Het but never Henrietta, is told in linear fashion from childhood to the present day. Long walks to school, first dates - the War; these stories are so familiar that Once Upon a Lifetime could easily have been little more than a clichéd stroll down a nostalgia blossomed avenue and yet it is from this very familiarity that a tender revelation is teased.

The cast of two, Rebecca Dickson-Black and Francis Woolf, charmed as Het and Sid, whose pastoral naivety was surely in tune with the care home residents whose stories they were telling. Dickson and Woolf appeared to have great affection for these characters which, given the relatively short gestation of Once Upon a Lifetime, they no doubt had a large hand in shaping.

Before the performance Jon Tavener briefly introduced the work, explaining the inspiration - his own Father's temporary descent into dementia and the restorative power of memory he witnessed - and ended by stressing that this story belonged to those whose memories he had plundered, that this was "their story, not ours." With the greatest respect I must disagree.

The memories realised in Once Upon a Lifetime in some way belong to all of us, whether through our own experience or that of our parents or grandparents. The very mundanity of them, their quintessential ordinariness and familiarity is what exposes their significance as the first example in mankind's history of mass experience. The Second World War and the period following it are familiar, not simply because of their proximity but also because of their ubiquity. Whilst that century may have passed and social media now renders the phenomena of shared experience a common, if not daily, occurrence the collected memories of what is likely to be regarded as a pivotal century in mankind's story still resonate.

Once Upon a Lifetime composed a sweet and moving melody from this resonance, the clarity and potency of which lifted it from mere sentimental reminiscence to a powerful piece of folk history.  A beautifully constructed piece of theatre which it is difficult to believe could have been better.

Steve Hawthorne