THE MURDER OF MARIA MARTEN

or

THE RED BARN
- from Phoenix 69 [undated - assumed post-October 1969]

"A triumph of imaginative interpretation" is a true assessment of this production. The play itself is trite and lacking in literary value; in the hands of Miss Cracknell it came to life with astonishing verve.

From the very beginning, the entrance of the Victorian rabble and the distinguished guests, Mrs. Jewell, Miss Lees, Mr. Cherry and Mr. Kurt, (an innovation most happily conceived by Miss Cracknell) linked the melodrama with the twentieth century audience; and the suitably-Victorian presence of the House Manager, (Mr. Crowe) added verisimilitude to the occasion. (Was that pewter mug always empty?)

In the early part of the play Nell Hatfield (the gipsy) played by Miss Williams, assured the continuity of the action, and a very convincing gipsy she was too, alive and malignant with a Celtic-Romany fire and fury. Beside her poor deluded Maria (Miss Bracken) shone with an even sweeter innocence, typical of the purity of the rustic villagers of the nineteenth century, and an easy prey to the scheming, ruthless, villainous seducer. We were led to believe that these simple people saw, heard, thought no evil, devoted their lives to family living, good, plain fare, honest ale, country ditties, and making the untidiest Maypoles ever found in rural England. Of course, if ever a girl asked for trouble, Maria did, and it says much for Miss Bracken's interpretation that the pathos came over the footlights.

Tim Bobbin, brilliantly played by Mr. Mulliner, set the audience rocking with laughter; he was the wry epitome of the stage yokel and, in a consistent performance we remember particularly, his pogo-stick-like movements, his mime with the baby, his rounded eyes and his dress, his cowardly valour and sheer clowning, daft sagacity.

Rosa Post (Mrs. Sosabowska) gave a fine display of straight-faced ham acting, Petra Andrews (Mrs. Shipley) nobly supporting her We must congratulate the detective Pharos Lee (M, Gallat) on his debut on the English stage and assure him that he had just enough of a foreign accent to be truly sinister. Mrs.Marten (Miss Snow) has a sad part to play; it is her conviction that her daughter has been murdered that leads to the discovery of the body in the Red Barn. This part Miss Snow filled admirably, though it offered little scope for interpretation as a matronly weeper. We saw only enough of Johnny Badger to be able to recognise him as Mr. Muller. Fraulein Lang made a brief appearance as Corder' s maid. From what we saw we could have wished she had stayed longer'. Miss Woodall, as Meg Bobbin, was inevitably overshadowed by her brother, Tim. Miss Davies, as Anne Marten, Maria's sister, gave a very charming performance, particularly in her duet with Tim.

Did a more villainous villain ever tread the English stage than William Corder, played by Mr. Adams? We doubt it. His flashing eye, the sinister sweep of his cloak, his whole-hearted devotion to seduction and murder, his complete selfishness, the excellent clarity of his diction, all marked out this performance as one far better than the best to be found in amateur theatricals Of Mr. Adams we have learned to expect much; he did not disappoint us as the central character in this melodrama.

And the man who brought him to justice? No other than the honest rustic father of the sweet,def lowered, innocent Maria, Thomas Marten, played with a rare sincerity and passion by our accomplished actor, Mr. Grant who in the discovery scene in the Red Barn wept real tears and moved his audience to the willing suspension of disbelief. No-one will begrudge Mr. Grant his triumph; we offer him our sincere congratulations.

Our visits to other theatres make us appreciate how fortunate we are in this school to have not only the means of staging a first-class play but, more important than that, the highly-skilled people to do it. Our Stage Director, Mr. Jewell, is a past master at the art and he has built up a fine team of assistants. Mr. Clarke admirably designed the costumes and settings; we do not forget the brilliance of the scene In the Red Barn, where the simple shadow of a rafter-beam against a red glow most sinisterly suggested the cursed building. On such strokes of compressed inspiration the play abounded.

The modesty of our Mr. H is too well-known to need stressing. The exacting work he did with the musical interpretation and his training of the orchestra added tremendously to the value of this performance.

"The murder of Maria Marten' will be long remembered as a most cunningly contrived mixture of melodrama and burlesque; from the most unpromising material the inspiration of the producer, Miss Cracknell, and her assistants, produced a first-class entertainment employing the full range of the talents in which the school abounds.

R. E-J.