Lark Rise to Candleford
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Lark Rise to Candleford is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels about the English countryside, written by Flora Thompson, and first published in that form in 1945. The trilogy includes the previously published stories Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941) and Candleford Green (1943).
The stories relate to three communities, a hamlet, the nearby village and the nearest town in Oxfordshire, England at the start of the 20th century. The stories are loosely based around Flora's childhood experiences.
She wrote a sequel Heatherley (c.1944) which was published posthumously.
[edit] The plays
The television scriptwriter and playwright Keith Dewhurst adapted Thompson’s trilogy into two plays, Lark Rise and Candleford, which were performed in the Cottesloe auditorium of London’s National Theatre in 1978–9. Dewhurst’s concept was to reflect the familiarity, one for another, of the village inhabitants by staging the plays as a promenade, with the theatre seats removed and the actors, musicians and audience intermingling.
The books describe village life through the seasons of the year, but for the plays Dewhurst selected just two days: the first day of harvest for Lark Rise and the first hunt meet of the new year, a winter’s day in January, for Candleford. For both plays he drew on Thompson’s own introductions to set the scene and, movingly, her reflections on the fates of her characters from the perspective of the future – a future in which many of the boys just depicted had died in war – as a coda. As the plays ended the audience, suddenly torn from their participation in the re-created world, recognised the value of a way of life, close to the the land and countryside, that they could never know for themselves. “It will send most spectators out wiser and happier human beings...one of those rare theatrical occasions with a genuine healing quality”, wrote theatre critic Michael Billington of The Guardian.
In the same way as Dewhurst was able to draw on Thompson’s words for his text, the musical directors for the productions, John Tams and Ashley Hutchings, made use of traditional songs as the basis for the score. In their arrangements the tunes, by turns stirring, atmospheric and poignant, allowed the audience to move (both literally and figuratively) between scenes. The performers were the Albion Band. A cast recording was released in 1980 and such is its enduring appeal that it was re-released on July 17, 2006 – catalogue number TECD097 on the Talking Elephant label.
The joint directors of the productions were Bill Bryden and Sebastian Graham-Jones and Flora Thompson (“Laura” in the plays) was played by Valerie Whittington. In the 1978 Olivier Awards Lark Rise was nominated for “Best Play” and “Best Director”, but won in neither category.
