The String of Amber by Rodney Ackland

This was the 1970 entry into the NSW Arts Council's Drama Festival, and opened in October 1970.  It was a Rene Levenspiel production, and was a three-hander featuring Beth Gingell, Bonnie Bryant and Gwen Clarke (Gwen is still an active Life Member of the group, Bonnie sadly passed away in August 2009).  The show was a reprise of the 1962 production in which Bonnie also played Agatha, which was billed with the alternative title The Old Ladies.

(The picture at left is Bonnie Bryant prepared for the play and is a thumbnail.  Click on the picture for the full-sized image).

Extracts from this play were more recently reprised in the 2002 revue "Us", and I can remember shivers running up and down my spine at the conclusion.  The 2002 production featured Pollyana Forshaw and Kath Izzard, along with an original cast member (albeit playing a different role) Gwen Clarke.

The 1970 production gained an award for "Best Actress" for Bonnie Bryant in the Arts Council's NSW Drama Festival.  The Adjudicator was Reid Douglas.

Note that the programme for this show was not roneo'd off, but actually professionally printed.  The next few years would see professionally printed programmes, with the odd reversion to the Gestetner machine for a programme here and there.

The play is a clever dramatisation of a 1924 novel by Hugh Walpole by playwright Rodney Ackland.  Three old women each living in her own bed-sitting room in a dilapidated house would not, one might imagine, give scope for dramatic episode.  Yet the author has created three characters so inherently different and individual that the mere accident of their coming to live in the same house is sufficient to bring about situations of pathos, humour, intense drama, and ultimate tragedy.  The story is drawn from the characters themselves.  They do not fit into the story; they are the story.

In a particularly harsh winter in a rundown old boarding house in Pontippy Square, Lucy and May have rooms in the house, and through fond memories, simple pleasures and buried hopes, happily help each other through their impoverished days.

But in the upstairs room the dark, brooding presence of Agatha threatens to ruin their friendship.  Little by little she begins a journey of terror as she manipulates, ridicules and undermines the careful fabric of Lucy and May's lives.  Is Lucy's son really alive?  Why does May depend so much on her prized possessions?  And what is the terrible secret that Agatha craves to discover?

The String of Amber show programme (pdf file, 241,077 bytes)

The Old Ladies novel by Hugh Walpole (text file, 324,606 bytes)

Hit No  

Send email to wdg@wyongdramagroup.com.au with comments or questions about this site
Copyright © May-11 by Peter Deane   -  Last modified: Monday, 18 July 2011 02:47 AM