Firstly, Happy Saint David’s Day everyone (or should that be Dydd Gwyl Dewi Sant Hapus?). Anyway, we’ve been out on the road touring Tales of the Country for several weeks now. By the end of last week we were a very tired team but I’m pleased to say we were still delivering. In fact I think some of last weeks’ shows were the best of the whole tour. Our Director Kate Budgen came to see the show on Friday night at the Severn Theatre, Shrewsbury and seemed delighted with where the show was at. It was a great night; another sold out venue with over 400 happy theatre-goers. Also the people who’s lives we are portraying were in too – Brian, Jane and the children had come along to see the show for one last time. The only hickup of the night was some twazzock lighting a cigarette and setting the fire alarms off! It was quite a surreal interval standing in the rain outside the theatre with 400 punters. After a prolonged interval we were given the all-clear to enter the building for the second half. It was a great show and everyone seemed very happy. On Saturday, after another sold out performance at the Edge Theatre, Much Wenlock we all went to our favourite Ludlow pub The Church and enjoyed several well deserved late beers. In a way it seemed like a last night knees up because we won’t get to celebrate when we actually finish the show on Saturday.

In was lovely returning to the Severn Theatre as that’s where our previous tour started last year. I know I’ve said this before but I’ve loved doing this job. Partly because I so enjoyed Brian’s book and it’s been a pleasure getting to know him and his lovely family. It’s also been hugely rewarding to be working with such a talented company and two of the best directors I’ve ever worked with. More than anything it’s been hugely rewarding to hear and feel the audience’s reaction to this show. At lot of our local audiences have grown up with Pentabus Theatre’s work. Plays like Strawberry Fields, Kebab, Origins and now Tales of the Country have appealed to audiences both locally and nationally and even enjoyed success in London (by no means an easy thing to do). The work of Pentabus has such a broad appeal and I think Tales has enjoyed that broad appeal. It’s therefore been an absolute pleasure and an honour to tour this show again and when I take off my cloth cap for the last time after next Saturday’s show I’ll feel more than a little sad.

Sean Carlsen

I am on a very packed train back to London, after a swift visit up to Northumberland to see how the ‘Tales of the Country’ gang are getting on. They are just over half way through the tour, and have been travelling many a mile to take the show to village halls far and wide. Yesterday they made their brief home in a village hall in Howick, a lovely little hall and very welcoming people, but my god it was cold! Saying that, it was the first venue where an open log fire sat in our back stage area- in between costume changes, actors could spend a few brief seconds warming themselves by the fire before braving the cold onstage again!

I arrived as Jo was setting up all the lights-apparently some village halls have not enjoyed our set up as it kept tripping the electricity, meaning Jo has had to get creative on the lighting desk and use minimal lights to avoid it happening during shows. So when I arrived they were in the process of realizing that this was going to be another one of those venues-minimal lighting and the potential for everything to suddenly switch off! Ah the realities of village hall touring! But by now, everyone took this in their stride and just worked out what would change as a result. After an amazing curry cooked for us by our hosts, the village hall began to fill up with audience. It was a lovely show, and an attentive audience, with the obligatory raffle (no I didn’t win. Again. Gutted. There was a pretty delicious looking coffee cake I had my eye on.). It was great to see the show again and to see the company working so well together, both onstage and off. For those who have seen the show, you will be aware of how proppy it is-boxes and boxes of the things, which all have to be carefully packed and unpacked each time. But what was so amazing was that the show finished, the contented audience made their way home (many had brought torches for the dark walk home-no street lights here as no streets!) and the company got cracking on taking the set down and packing the van. They were like the slickest of slick machines, serious business. I sort of sat around in the background pretending to be very useful, but actually was pretty much the opposite-everyone was so clear and efficient as to what had to be done, that my intervention would have just held things up. So I mainly watched as they transformed the village hall back to its original state in under an hour. Awesome. And by 11pm we were back at our B and B, glass of wine in hand, in front of an enormous log fire. Delightful.

This week, they are all staying in an incredible place called Alnwick Lodge, and what a place it is! The owners specialize in furniture restoration, so everywhere you look is a beautiful piece of lovingly restored furniture (all for sale in case you are tempted during your stay!). Breakfast was an event to remember-walking into a converted stable, with massive round banquet like tables, another log fire, candles all over the room and a table heaving with breakfast goodies. We tucked in to tea and toast while cooked breakfasts were made for everyone. I’ve never had breakfast by candle light before, but I think I might make a habit of it, a very atmospheric start to the day! It has been really important considering the amount of driving, performing, packing and unpacking that the company are doing, that they have a nice place to go back to and everyone has said that they have stayed in some wonderful places, from old cheese and cider houses to cosy little cottages, all with warm and welcoming hosts. So I left the company this morning, all sated after their breakfasts, with plans to go for a walk in the cold misty morning, before heading to their next venue. Its back to stay in Ludlow next week, and I will next see the show at Theatre Severn, where they will have to make that great leap from tiny village hall and half a working light, to a huge stage, separate dressing rooms and technical wizardry at their fingertips! It is apparently sold out already, hurrah! It will be great to bring the show back there, as this is where it first opened last year.

Meanwhile, the company can look forward to a couple more days candle lit breakfasts at the Lodge, before they make their merry way back to Ludlow.

This week has seen us take “Tales Of The Country” out of Herefordshire
and Shropshire, down to Somerset - where the show has been received
really well. We have been made to feel very at ease in all the venues.
From the beautiful village hall of Wootton Courtenay nestling on the
side of a valley just outside of Dunster, to the very welcoming
village of Hatch Beauchamp where a very active local community decked
the hall out with bunting and hay bales and each candle - lit table
bore a big wooden board groaning with a generous ploughman’s lunch.
Bathed in soft warm light on a cold winter’s night, the venue looked
completely magical. Here we met the sparkly eyed Tony (78 years old, who
initially took credit for cooking the wonderful Shepherds pie we were
given for tea. It was his wife who had actually put in the graft of
making said massive Shepherd’s pie which was the size of The Isle of
Wight and well tasty!!) It was Twinkling Tony who kept us company and
furnished us with an interesting fact he had discovered when listening
to a programme on the radio. Take the last 2 numbers of the year in
which you were born, add it to the age you will be when you have had
your birthday this year, and you will find that the total will come to
111 in every case!!
It is a real priviledge to be part of this production which toured very
successfully last year and which I saw at The Conquest Theatre in
Bromyard. This second tour has 3 new actors in it including myself,
Charlie Buckland who plays Brian Viner and Oliver Mott who plays a
multitude of great characters and is no slouch in the sound-effects
department - dogs, chickens, flies, owls, you name it, Olly’s your
man. The three of us had to get up to speed quite quickly in
rehearsals as we only had 2 and a bit weeks to re-rehearse it. Thanks
to Kate Budgen’s brilliant, calm and spot on direction as well as great
support from Sean and Sarah who were in the last tour we were quickly
made to feel that this would not be a problem.
Next week we venture up to Northumberland and it will be really
interesting to see how “Tales Of The Country” goes down there. It is
certainly a joy to perform, and is so beautifully adapted from Brian
Viner’s lovely book that I’m hoping we continue to have great fun with it!

Angela Bain (plays Capable Woman, a Cat…and other characters).

Touring jobs always mean that you venture to places you’d never ordinarily go to. And therefore I’ve just discovered that Wiltshire is the most beautiful county. Obviously not as beautiful as Herefordshire (I’ve got to say that in case Brian happens to read this). But to be fair, in general the countryside on this island really is spectacular and in the past week alone we’ve been treated to the delights of rural Wiltshire. We stayed in 2 beautiful cottages on Wick Farm near Lacock (of the Cranford fame) and had a really lovely art-imitating-life few days with the requisite woodburning stove, toast rack, torch by the bed (complete with bed head), butterdish and enough cutlery to set the table for a three course meal – thank you.

That will make no sense if you’ve not seen the show but if you have like the farmer and his wife who own Wick Farm then you’ll chortle like your sides are going to split. They had the tourist board in the week before we arrived and were sat on the front row with their son on Friday night at The Pound Arts Centre in Corsham (which, incidentally, is a lovely little venue and was so thriving with activity all day that it made me think every town should have one). It’s like this show was written for Sue and Philip. And when you can connect personally with something you see on stage it turns a good evening into a fantastic one. So I’m so glad we’re going to rural areas all over the UK. Although I have so far discovered that the Wiltshire audience seems rather shocked by the word a*******s.

PS. Oh and I forgot, we saw Camilla and Charles in a car. And Seán was staying in a B&B owned by one of Camilla’s neighbours. And rural legend has it that she was pelted with buns at the local shop after Diana’s demise. How terribly English.

SARAH STANLEY (Jane Viner in ‘Tales of the Country’)

There are very few theatre companies, I imagine,  where the vehicular access is via a fantastically muddy and odoriferous farmyard replete with cows, silage barns, and resting tractors – but then what could be more appropriate when you are working on a production titled “Tales of the Country”.

As a native Crouch Ender I am also rather proud to playing an ex Crouch Ender (even if he did only live in N8 for 8 years…….), the very self deprecating and general all round (in an elliptical sense) good egg, Brian Viner, the Independent journalist of repute.

Playing a living person gives one a sense of onerous responsibility – you want in the most basic sense to do them justice, to be fair, to be truthful, to be honest.

Brian has already refracted himself and the story of his relocation in print in his own book, “Tales of the Country”. Nick Warburton, the writer who has brilliant adapted Brain’s book into a superbly  crafted and brilliantly realised play, has further distilled a stage version of the written version of Brian. Furthermore, in the previous original production that toured last year another actor created the original stage character of Brian. And what’s more his original stage wife, Sarah Stanley, is returning for the new tour.

So driving towards Pentabus HQ through the rolling Salop countryside on the first day of rehearsals, I feel a considerable weight of Brianess upon me.

Can I serve both the real and fictional Brians?

Pentabus is based in an old school building in the small village of Bromfield which I discover was once home to a Benedictine Priory sitting on the confluence of those two deeply Housmanesque rivers, the Teme and the Onny. The A49 is a busy road which splices the village but HQ is quiet and faces out onto the relentless beauty of the Marches Hills.

Working here fulfils a long held ambition. Pentabus has consistently commissioned and developed wonderful new writing into outstanding productions – in particular as an enormous fan of Mary Webb I desperately wanted to work on the much feted “Precious Bane” and did audition, but it was not be. As an audience member I sat enthralled watching “Silent Engine” and “White Open Spaces”.

So there is a certain frisson on entering the portals of such a theatrical powerhouse, whatever the burden of Brianess I might feel.

Our welcome is warm and encouraging. I have already met my fellow male actors as we share digs  in Ludlow. And I know fellow cast member, the wonderful Angela Bain as we recently worked together for Forest Forge, but it is the first time I have met Sarah Stanley, the original Mrs Jane Viner.

Now goodness know what she makes of her new Brian……………..

CHARLIE BUCKLAND (Brian Viner)