Review: The Long Way Home, Ipswich Arts Association

As with all Eastern Angles' productions, The Long Way Home is deceptively simple both in Mika Handley's inventive design and the interpretation of Old Mother's epic journey home, through forests and across mountains and farm land on a small stage with minimalist props. We meet Old Mother (Susan McGoun), a widow, as she decides it is time for her to return to the coast, where she was born. She is tired of ‘always being the one who came from somewhere else'. But Old Woman's dead husband is not best pleased and he appears as a puppet ghost, an earthenware pot for his head, to tell her so. It sounds mad, but it works. The ghost is operated by the narrators (deftly played by James Bolt and Jumaan Short) who, in addition to working a series of ingenious puppetry, slip in and out of characters encountered along the way.

Undeterred, Old Woman dismisses her husband and sets off on her final journey, passing first through a forest. She stumbles on a feral dog-child (Theo Devaney), a frightened, gibbering wreck who gradually responds to her kindness. They form a bond and together, aided by the narrators, continue the journey encountering a series of strange and unsettling characters, all fighting their own personal demons.

The dog-child is no easy role but Devaney carries it off admirably. Some of his lines are a little over-dramatic, as he demands an explanation for God, but he brings an overall believability to the character. McGoun infuses Old Mother with unexpected wit, thereby lifting what could otherwise have been heavily-laboured references to the generation gap.

The true origins of the dog-boy remained enigmatic throughout as befits a folk tale. Events are not always resolved tidily, thus providing the piece with depth. Who, or what, the dog-boy is or represents is open to interpretation.

Presenting what Ivan Cutting describes as an ‘off the shelf play', and set in Greece at that, could have been a gamble for a company so readily associated with East Anglia. Yet the universal story of Old Mother is such that it needed only an imaginative script, a talented director, an innovative designer, and four versatile actors to make it work. Happily for audiences in a variety of venues across the region, there were all of these ... and more.

Carol Twinch, Ipswich Arts Association