‘Visitors’ now showing at The Watermill, Newbury is simultaneously heart-rending and heart-warming. Written and directed by Wiltshire writer, Barney Norris, it is set in an isolated farmhouse near Pewsey and explores how this rural way of life can end. With fine acting and a set, lighting and music which enhance the themes, the play is a ‘must-see’ and is, as Norris describes it, ‘a love song to the world I come from.’
The play centres on the two main characters of Edie and Arthur and the audience is drawn into their close, loving and intimate relationship as they reminisce over their long lives together – meeting as children, marrying, visits to Lulworth Cove, the hard life on the farm after the war, but also the fulfilment of working on the land and walking in the wheat fields. Edie is in the early stages of dementia yet there is gentle humour as they anticipate what the future will hold. They wait for a young carer, Kate, to arrive – the first visitor. The second visitor is their son, Stephen, who has rejected their way of life and all but excluded them from his. He works in life insurance and sees his parents as a problem to be solved. Kate is still trying to find her way in the world and Stephen, as his marriage begins to break down, has lost his.
The imaginatively designed set emphasises the rural isolation of the farm with golden wheat surrounding the stage. As Edie’s dementia develops and she slips more and more into a twilight world, she still has flashes of insight – ‘Do you feel adrift as I do? All falls away, the tide goes out on us. I feel I’m under water.’ The lighting enhances this movement from the bright light at the beginning to muted, twilight shades. Norris says, “Because it’s about the end of love, the play is kind of about lights going out, fuses burning out, it’s like the moment when a fire stops being flames and turns into wood flickering. That ebb is what we’re trying to make the play of.”
This fading away is also enhanced by the music. At first there are very faint strains of the funereal hymn – ‘Abide with me’ whose first lines, ‘fast falls the eventide’ resonate with the audience. This music becomes louder as Edie slips further into her dementia world.
Despite the cruelty of the inevitable separation of Edie and Arthur and the loss of their farm where they’ve lived all their lives and which has been in Arthur’s family for generations, the play does celebrate the love that transcends this. Norris says, “It’s just about when people have to face these things which we all have to face, they face them with the greatest heroism and the biggest hearts that they can muster. I just tried to make it as joyous and grateful for life as it could possibly be.”
It is no surprise that when this play was first performed in 2014 it gained many accolades and awards. This production must surely do the same. Click here to book tickets or phone the Box Office on 01635 46044. Performances are every day at 7:30pm (except Sundays) with matinees on Thursdays and Saturdays at 2:30pm until April 22nd
Marlborough and Manton announce Coronation celebrations
