20 – 29 January 2022
by Stewart Pringle
Harry feels like life is beginning to tick down, his autumn years spent quietly caring for the community he loves. Denise thinks life begins in retirement and she’s dancing like she’s still at high school.
When their paths cross at the village hall, their understanding of the time they have left changes irrevocably. What do community, growing old, and falling in love really mean? And who gets to decide anyway?
Trestle tenderly but truthfully explores love and ageing, asking how we choose to live in the face of soaring life expecancies. It won the 2017 Papatango New Writing Prize and premiered at Southwark Playhouse, London, in November 2017.
CAST
Harry | Chester Stern
Denise | Linda Harris
Directed by Keith Orton
Photography by Jan Kool
Review | January 2022 | Theo Spring
To find two actors willing to take on the demanding learning required in a two-hander is often tricky. To find two actors of the calibre found for Trestle acclaims the perspicacity of director Keith Orton. To achieve the telling of this charming tale by two actors who are not, I hope they won’t mind my saying, in their first flush of youth, credits them with an ability to be greatly applauded.
Set in a small North Yorkshire town, the Temperance Hall is rented out to various groups. A weekly hirer is Harry who chairs the local Improvements Committee. A widower, set in his ways, well turned out (he says) through it, he aims to help his community. As his allocated time in the hall ends, the next hirer is Denise who runs a Zumba class. They haven’t met before and initially edge politely round one other and the joy of this play is watching the two of them slowly warm to each other and develop a touching friendship.
Ever ready to tackle a whole play in an accent, Chester Stern’s Harry is North Yorkshire perfect – to the manner born it seems, with Linda Harris as Denise equally sure in her cadence.
The play’s scenes are set at one week intervals at the end of Harry’s meeting (we never meet his fellow members although we learn about them) and the time overlap of Denise arriving to set up for her class. Again, we never meet her Zumba members, but these scenes involve the constant putting away of chairs, collapsing the table (hence Trestle), and exchanging, at first, a few words before Harry departs and Denise takes over the hall. Adding to the marked ability to be word perfect, the pair had to remember whether to stack the chairs, collapse the table, put the chairs in place, put the table up and so on. With scenes so similar, they get an added accolade for remembering what went where, and when.
Time creates a deeper friendship, albeit by Yorkshire standards, which is not without its ‘discussions’. Denise sits in on one of Harry’s meetings with argumentative effect. Harry, in turn is persuaded to join a Zumba class and Act One closes on the amusing spectacle of Harry braving a pair of very short red shorts to join Denise in an exercise routine, choreographed by Penny Parker, in which he is initially hesitant but is finally jubilant with moves which would not be out of place in a Street Dance dance class.
Being set in the round and with such sparse furniture, there is ample room for the space to take on the empty atmosphere of a village hall and the setting of the table and chairs in exactly the same place each time evokes the permanence of Harry’s meetings.
Having said this was a two-hander, there is a further very important element which added hugely to both the enjoyment and the scene-setting and that was the frequent use of different brass band music. Think Brighouse and Rastrick to get the picture. There was a wide gamut of tunes, including the helpful Carol which foretold Christmas, and all beautifully played. The many sound cues were expertly designed by Tony Richardson.
No stranger to almost everything theatrical, it was a surprise to learn that Trestle was Keith Orton’s directorial debut. His programme notes confirm his encouragement of new writing for the theatre and finding the award-winning playwright Stewart Pringle’s truly delightful Trestle certainly endorsed this aim. A much-needed ‘good feeling’ play, superbly acted and directed. Anyone who didn’t buy a ticket missed a real treat.