Lovers’ Vows

Went with neighbour Rachel to Bedales to see a production by the Stansted Players of Lovers Vows.  Stansted Players are a long running group of performers set up annually by one of the old teachers from Bedales who irreverently revives long buried plays, intersperses them with random but on message songs, for an off the wall performance over a week or so.  

This play was Lovers’ Vows by Mrs Inchbald and it is the play that is rehearsed by the young people in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park but never performed due to the untimely return of disapproving Sir Thomas.  It is a play that the characters in the novel would have know as it had had huge success but as the late 18th - mid 19th Century were a nadir in British Theatre the bar was pretty low.  I have just re read Mansfield Park to get the context and I am glad I did because i could see more clearly why it had been a controversial choice.  I haven’t read MP for years and generally it isn’t a favourite but it’s a more societal play and so there is much of interest in the observations, setting and language.   And btw fascinating fact - the contemporary usage ‘throw shade’ over something which I thought Modern American is right there in Austen, meaning the same thing. She never ceases to surprise.

So an entertaining evening, some beautiful singing especially of Vaughn Williams Linden Lea and ABBA’s Money Money Money.  Yes, anachronistic songs. 

Otherwise a day in the barn office, tricky conversations, things to do for the launch. So much to sort before our holiday on Saturday.  V was at the cricket in Sussex all day with an old friend.