Friday night it rained so we did not go to watch the Lamb Players performing in the National Trust’s Lamb House garden, former home of American writer Henry James. This year is the anniversary of his death which was celebrated at the property earlier this year.
Saturday evening, it was blowing a gale, but we went all the same to see “Much Ado About Nothing” and it was magnificent. The cast spoke their lines clearly and the music of Shakespeare’s language held us all. Given the weather, the abridged version was both effective and welcome.
The plot is almost about nothing, but the humour and the characterisation came across so strongly that our attention was held throughout – and the interplay between Benedick and Beatrice is as perennial as the grass.
Some brave souls stayed on for a picnic, but the ground where we were sitting was stained with mulberry juice. A surreptitious hand-plucked berry in the mouth would save it from falling on someone else’s head, I thought to myself. It was altogether a most enjoyable experience.
[Queen Elizabeth the First, who visited Rye in 1573, ordered the planting of mulberry trees to provide food for the silk worms – whose silk was being used by the Huguenot refugees from France to weave popular new draperies. Editor]
photo: Kenneth Bird