What’s It Like?
Stephen Jeffreys’ intricately-crafted adaptation of Dickens’ novel is anything but ‘hard times’ for an audience. With four actors hurtling through over twenty major characters and thirty scenes, this is a joyous celebration of boldly theatrical live story-telling.
When Lighthouse Theatre take a small company on the road to serve the arts centres and mid-scale theatres in Wales which have to compete hard for drama audiences, what we deliver needs to be unique. We don’t aim to create ‘pocket’ West End shows or ‘lite’ versions of number one tours: our shows revel in the creative magic fashioned by great performers and innovative creative teams.
What were the challenges?
We chose Hard Times because it offered us everything we want to give our audiences; a riveting story, packed with incident and extraordinary characters which had to be created by sharing an imaginative journey with the audience. We seek out pieces – like Aberystwyth Mon Amour – which present us with huge challenges because that when you get most creative. Aberystwyth-based Sean Cavanagh has come up with a stunning, witty set design which delights by offering endless new environments for the action.
BAFTA-winning Tic Ashfield joins us to compose music especially for this production, and, hot-foot from an epic staging of Dracula in Asia, our old friend Joe Harmston directs.
Hard Times offers a fantastic evening of entertainment from the craziness of vivid Dickens’ characters like lisping circus master, Sleary and the poisonous meddling of Mrs Sparsit, to the heart of Louisa’s search for happiness.
Why Hard Times?
In the world of 2017 it also offers some extraordinary insight into the challenges we face today. Hard Times is one of Charles Dickens' most socially conscious novels at a time when the need for a spotlight on such a piece is very high. Current debates about education in the UK plus recent events at Tata steel see their precursors in Dickens storyline written 150 years earlier. Dickens was observing the inhumanity of nineteenth education – ‘Facts, Facts, Facts!’ – and industrial practices where the workers are simply ‘hands’,which become part of a crushing machine. Our modern experience engages in the same arguments about what it is worth teaching our children in order to make them fit for work in the technological world of the future. Engrossing our audience in a tale from the past will, we hope, cast some light on our present. Gradgrind and his model school elevate the teaching of 'facts' above all else and a banishment of all 'fancy' and imagination. Stephen Jeffreys’ adaptation makes a plea for 'a childhood of the mind, a childhood of the body, and a childhood of the imagination'. The colourful circus offers such a thing. In our own time, education policy has been in crisis. Successive administrations have pursued 'rigour' and measurable results in an attempt to drive up standards, at the cost of engagement in the arts, communication and creative play. Dickens' morality tale is a salutary warning of what may lie ahead. Dickens saw what we see; that when education was viewed as a commodity it killed imagination, the soul and eventually society.
Who’s In It?
In addition to Sonia Beck (who played Shirley Valentine for us last year), we’re lucky to welcome back Non Haf (fresh from filming the third series of Parch for S4C) and to introduce to our audiences, Blackwood actor Vern Griffiths (best known for The Chris Corcoran Show and The Graham Norton Show). It’s fabulous returning to venues we’ve played before and to go to a few new one. Their encouragement of small-scale touring companies like Lighthouse is vital and in return we do our best to support them in times when they are really under pressure. Being able to offer a wide range of material from comedy and music to dance and drama is crucial for a thriving venue doing its best to serve a loyal local audience and it is rewarding being part of that process in Wales.
