Back in 1967, the most extraordinary thing about Bentilee was its status as one of the largest council estates in Europe – at least, that is, until the night of 2 September. The bright lights seen then, by scores of people, were nothing to do with the industries in the surrounding area, the potteries, mines and steel furnaces of Stoke-on-Trent. Eyewitnesses reported that “it seemed like a saucer”, “it changed in different colours”. One admitted: “I did get frightened of it when it dropped.”
Deborah McAndrew’s latest play opens and closes with this extraordinary event. In the tiny, bare brick-walled, former pottery dipping house that is the new home of Claybody Theatre (founded and run by McAndrew with her husband and joint artistic director, Conrad Nelson), the earth seems to rumble, an eerie something to come and go. Surprised locals stand before us, staring up and over our heads, as if interrogating the night sky beyond the theatre roof.
Satisfying sci-fi effects are created from low-tech resources by a skilled team: Nelson (director), Dawn Allsopp (designer), Jo Dawson (lighting) and Scott Ralph (sound), but lights descending from the stars are not the true focus of this whimsical, funny, touching period drama. Their purpose is to illumine the “ordinary” lives of the “ordinary” people of Bentilee, the miners and clerks, dinner ladies and salespeople. Ultimately, McAndrew’s story shows individuals striving to connect; it poses a challenge to the assertion made by one of the characters, that humans exist in isolation, like planets in space.
In this well-delivered production, Polly Lister is excellent as the matriarchal Beverley, Kymberley Cochrane as the misfit maths genius Jean, Ava Ralph as her combative cousin, Jack Wilkinson as a bashful UFO enthusiast, Phil Corbitt as the outsider with secrets and Eddy Westbury as the mysterious, question-asking stranger. No less excellent are the other members of this 24-strong cast: the bingo-playing, fitness-class gyrating, UFO-watching community actors.
