What a special thing this performance was! Sights and sounds unleashed the power of Coleridge’s words and the effect was utterly captivating. It was a complete and total treat for the senses. The costumes, the music, the children, the acting, the direction, each contributed in a most perfect and clever way. The wide open air was filled with drama. It was one of those shows that makes you pity (and despise) the people that missed it. A huge amount of work must have gone into this. But what a unique gift it was to the audience. I wonder what Coleridge himself would have thought of it? It was thrilling for a piece of work written in 1797 to explode into our lives in 2009. I can’t wait to re-visit the poem, armed as I now am, with such great memories of the show.
Filed under: Ancient Mariner, London Literature Festival 2009 | Tagged: bellowhead, coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the wedding, young vic
Amit has put it so very well in his succinct, eloquent and objective post. Those few words ‘what a unique gift it was to the audience” really do sum up what was a goosebump-making performance.
There were two observations that made it very special personally; the energy and passion of the choirmaster as she enthused the massed voices who fed off her energy and the couple from Colchester who were sitting in front of me and who followed every line of the text in an old copy of Coleridge’s Poetical Works. Everyone involved has every right to feel enormous pride in their achievement in creating not one special performance that was the stuff memories are made of, but two. Thank you, all of you.
It was a brilliant performance!