Angels among the Trees Commissioned by the Playhouse Theatre, Nottingham
Played June 5th - June19th, 2004
Some press reaction to the production:
BBC NOTTINGHAM ONLINE
"In 1946 America, the way to fame and fortune was not Big Brother or American Idol, it was to go West. To find California: The Promised Land.Thousands trooped across the Plains of America that year, among them the so-called Donner Party. Angels Among the Trees relates their tragic history in all its grizzly horror.
Not for the faint hearted, it is a production about desperation in the face of snow, no food, human error and yet more snow.
Director Giles Croft distils an epic journey of when the American Dream becomes a nightmare. And yes, they do end up eating each other.
We’re led through a series of doom-laden events to a catastrophe that still makes me shiver when I think about it.
Historically dense, the play isn’t helped by the schizophrenia among the cast – there are just nine actors for 26 roles. But what we lack in detail we gain in effect.
Scenery and lighting combine to create not just a stage set but a landscape. Vast planes transform into an arctic wilderness with real(ish) snow and even, beneath the stage, the hellish cabins of hunger.
The stunning panoramas tell a monologue all of their own and juxtapose the beautiful with the revolting, shocking events on stage.
But this play does more than shock, and whilst I will, no doubt, be having nightmares for weeks, it is also a play about decisions, about historical truths and, the ambiguous ‘human condition.’
Whilst reviling at the multiple forms of greed depicted on the stage and whilst the scenery conjures a place far beyond the plush blue seats of the Playhouse, we cannot truly distance ourselves from the behaviour we see.
When people do things that seem to defy human nature we can but question our own humanity."
Scores : 4/5
Anna Cookson
(10/06/04)
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NOTTINGHAM EVENING POST
"...Jonathan Holloway’s ambitious new drama is not for faint hearts.Although Angels Among the Trees is not actually about cannibalism, it was hard last night to dismiss from the mind the most disturbing image in Giles Croft’s powerful production.
A bundle representing a shrouded dead baby is hung on the wall of a log cabin.
We later learn that the little corpse has helped sustain the frail and ravenous who are trapped in the snowbound cabin in the most savage winter ever to freeze the Sierra Nevada....The success of Holloway’s play is that it captures an urge we all understand: the urge for a better life.
In the case of these stop-at-nothing pioneers it is an urge that drives them through the most appalling suffering and forces them to confront the most awful judgement calls (the cannibalism question is just one).
No gratuitous pun intended, but it’s meaty stuff
...Dominic Letts (Reed), Nicola Harrison (his teenage daughter Patty) and Jonathan Melia (the easy-to-dislike Keiserberg, exultant when justifying the consumption of human flesh) make important contributions to a show enhanced by John Morton’s moody music"
...But perhaps Holloway’s most important fellow story-teller is the designer Jamie Vartan
Jeremy Lewis
(10/06/04)
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THE INDEPENDENT
"It’s a graphic, ghoulish tale, and as the snowy crisis descends and nerves fray, audience involvement visibly increased....glorious design uplifts the show: an eerie suspended mountain backdrop and icy white sheeting that - backed by a terrifying snow machine - induces a powerful claustrophobic feel.
...what comes across increasingly superbly is the high voltage tensions between this mix of characters - savoury, unsavoury, sanctimonious, rough-and-ready - and the appalling conditions.
Angels Among the Trees evolves into a gripping drama, and Giles Croft’s staging is a sock in the eye and a visual treat."
Roderic Dunnett
(10/06/04)
-------------------REVIEWSGATE.COM
"...this play follows the true story of the ill-fated Donner Party as they struggle to survive the journey across America to California in 1846, and is as harrowing as they come....Compelling and powerful stuff - there is almost too much emotion to absorb."
Jen Mitchell
(11/06/04)
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THE TIMES
...There’s no doubt about it: this production looks terrific...Jamie Vartan’s designs rise majestically to the challenge of the theme"
...Vartan creates a series of awe-inspiring backdrops. Between scenes, black flats glide back and forth with balletic grace"
...The nine actors, each playing multiple roles, are hardworking and committed"
...Visually, Angels Among the Trees is never less than impressive"
Sam Marlowe
(11/06/04)
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METRO
In 1846, a group of settlers headed across the US mid-western plains. They sought the riches they thought the Californian coast would afford. What they found was the harshest winter in American history. To overcome the famine they had to dot he unthinkable – feed off the fallen.Director Giles Croft and writer Jonathan Holloway paint a stark picture of human ambition and failure against the ever-changing landscape of sun-kissed hope and snow-capped horror. The cinematic set is framed by shifting screens; each scene unravels, complete with captions, like a storyboard springing to life on a stripped wooden raked floor.
As people start to fight and the snow starts to fall, we see how they have become accustomed to by how they clear the bodies. The stage is covered in white fabric which is propped up to make tents. Trees are raised and lowered to suggest the depths of the drifts. The front of the stage falls away to show the desperate underworld the survivors inhabit.
As survivors are rescued and revenge enacted, the story comes to a haunting conclusion in a beautifully portrayed production.
Scores: 5/5
Michael Pinchbeck
(11/06/04)
---------------------THE GUARDIAN
"...Though the subject matter is unremittingly bleak, Giles Croft's expansive staging is often rather beautiful. Jamie Vartan's design exploits the technical resources of the Playhouse to the full: blizzards blow in with chilling verisimilitude, and there is an astonishing moment when the cast are revealed to have hunkered down and set up camp in the orchestra pit.
If there's a flaw, it's that the Brechtian division of the action into short, subtitled scenes makes it hard to identify, let alone identify with, many of the characters. Holloway's play is an epic hymn to man's capacity for survival, but it leaves you feeling for humanity, rather than individual human beings."
4/5 stars
Alfred Hickling
15/06/04
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© The Tennyson Agency 2004