Stage Dragon Review: Travels With My Aunt: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Published on: 20 Apr, 2016
Updated on: 20 Apr, 2016

We sit in the auditorium waiting for the performance to begin. The stage goes dark and when the lights come up, the audience is confronted by four identically dressed individuals who proceed to inform us that “their” mother has died.

A moment later and Aunt Augusta appears.

A very clever piece of staging is used in this production enabling four actors to play a plethora of characters simply by adding a catchy little piece of stage dressing. You never know who is about to change from one character to another until you see that little extra bit of stage craft.

Aunt Augusta being interrogated by Colonel Hakim in Istanbul.

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene is the story of a retired bank manager whose mother has recently died. His Aunt Augusta appears and suddenly his world is turned upside down.

The four actors have a great breadth of experience which allows them to pull every nuance from Graham Greene’s writing.

Richard Earl, David Partridge, Jack Hulland and Katherine Senior very energetically used the set to give us a glimpse into the life of a retired bank manager who has not really lived.

Aunt Augusta asking Richard to come on the Orient Express to Istanbul with her!

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the story presented by our cast. Each change of character brought a further blossoming of the bank manager into a more rounded person.

And Aunt Augusta was such a hoot. Watching these actors present the supporting characters, I closed my eyes and was lost in the change from male to female persona and vice versa.

All four played the part of Henry Pulling, sometimes all at once and sometimes singly. Each showed him changing as time passed. And they all played Aunt Augusta, who lived her life according to her rules, not those of society.

The remaining characters were divided between them very cleverly by the director Amanda Knott and the story adaptor Giles Havergal. This did mean that all four actors were on stage for the complete performance.

Aunt Augusta (with glasses) informing Henry Pulling about his parent’s background.

The phrase “travel broadens the mind” sprang to mind, as Richard expands to fufill his aunt’s expectations of him. All of the casual characters had an effect on the two main characters, from Tooley the sweet young thing on the Orient Express, to Wordsworth, enamoured of Augusta.

This is a story, full of laughs, but also with a fulsome amount of poignancy, which the audience understood completely.

There was an undercurrent of anticipation in the theatre, wondering who would show up next and would they be a “goody” or a “baddy”? The actors gave us the full range of emotions through the characters they played, and I for one, was sorry it was over.

But, we were left knowing that Henry would never be the same Henry we had met at the beginning of the play!

Another huge five star success at the Yvonne Arnaud.

Travels with my Aunt is on at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until Saturday, April 23. To book tickets, call 01483 440000 or click here to book online.