Huck

Queen's Theatre, Barnstaple

Review: Jo Wood

I CAN only think that beach weather and Easter holidays took their toll, or maybe volcanic dust kept people away. Whatever it was I am so pleased I was among a select audience treated to an absolute gem of a play: Huck.

Huck tells his own story. He's a boy, not yet a man, but with a world of trouble on his shoulders. Huck (Graeme Dalling) is rarely still, part of the action but also engaging his audience. On the run from an abusive father he falls in with Jim, a runaway slave, Joe Speare, with a voice as deep as the Mississippi.

As their raft floats downriver they get tangled up with myriad colourful characters all played by the five other actors. Each took several roles, changed age, costume, accent, again and again. It was a voyage of discovery as to who we'd meet around the next river bend. I really liked Jos Vantyler's outrageous Tom Sawyer and Ian Harris's ruthless Duke.

I went because I was intrigued. Huckleberry Finn is set on the Mississippi. How do you transform the stage into a river a mile wide? The answer, of course, is with a good deal of imagination, a vision which the director, John Terry, had in abundance, and an inspired script adapted by James Graham from Mark Twain's novel.

The wooden platform set depicted a raft but was so versatile it could be dismantled and rebuilt, used on different levels, with component planks becoming oars or gravestones.

Music provided the flavour of the piece with a 'booth' full of instruments which the actors played as background or as part of the action: singing, whirling around to folk-style dances or sliding along to the river's rhythm.

Racism and slavery are emotive issues today, and Fresh Glory Productions did not shy away from them, simply telling the story as Twain did, enhanced by Joe Speare's sensitive portrayal of Jim, but also giving a sympathetic insight into the entrenched attitudes of the time.

Come the end I wanted to rewind and see it all again. This was a proper piece of theatre which deserved a better audience. Fresh Glory Productions, if you're reading this, please come back to Barnstaple next year.