Return To Akenfield, The Stage

Craig Taylor's Return to Akenfield does what it says on the tin: he returns to the same area of Suffolk covered by Ronald Blythe's seminal Akenfield, which was first published in 1969, and speaks to the people of the area. What emerges in the two books is both fascinating as social history and compelling as human stories.

Naomi Jones's adaptation of Taylor's 2006 book is inspired and uplifting - a magical evocation of life in one small area of the world and a paean to the county of Suffolk. And one cannot imagine it being presented on the stage better than by Eastern Angles and the wonderful cast of five.

Between them, Sally Ann Burnett, Richard Earl, Robert Macpherson, David Redgrave and Charlotte Thompson create no fewer than 38 memorable characters, from a 97-year-old ex-colonial railway administrator to a 19-year-old waitress.

On a simple dais with a few chairs and a table, backed by coat racks on which hang the clothes and props they use throughout the presentation, the company of five is on stage throughout. Mika Handley's design has three simple telegraph poles receding in height diagonally across the area, economically and dramatically emphasising the flat landscape that is home to these people.

Jones has used the tale of a Polish migrant worker in his early twenties, and his on-off relationship with a girl he meets in a café, to frame the drama. Robert Macpherson is superb as the Pole, intelligent, wary, conscious of an upbringing quite at odds with most of the people he finds himself amongst.

Charlotte Thompson plays the girl. It is a performance of simple sincerity. Richard Earl appears as an National Farmers' Union rep and fills in much of the farming background - how one man driving a huge tractor now does the work of eight; how the farmer/employee relationship has changed, mostly for the better. David Redgrave is superb as older characters including an Ould Boy who trims the grass in the churchyard for free just because he wants to see it tidy (sound effects, as elsewhere, provided by the talented company). Sally Ann Burnett catches perfectly the lady priest with her three parishioners. Only the opening to the second half, when Ronald Blythe, Craig Taylor and Peter Hall (who directed a film of Blythe's book in 1974) talk about the project, seems gratuitously tacked on.

Otherwise, the adaptation is faultless. As the man sitting on the next seat said to his neighbour as we stood for the interval: "Certainly recognise a lot of what's going on there."

High praise indeed.

Hugh Homan, The Stage