HOME, AGAIN (Boaty Theatre Company)

 

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Link: https://www.boatytheatre.co.uk/tickets 

Available until: Livestreams on 26^th and 27^th March at 7pm

Home, Again is about a man called George returning home to his wife Anna. He has been fighting in the war and he’s suffered a traumatic head injury which is affecting his memory. 

 

Six years have past since George and Anna have seen each other. George wonders if his memory problems will allow him to recognise Anna. As she waits at home for him, making the house look beautiful, she wonders the same thing. 

 

I have read a few stories on this subject, but they usually focus on the soldier and his problems. Home, Again has a much bigger focus on the person waiting at home. They might not have been through anything like as much as a soldier has been through, but it doesn’t mean life has been easy for them or that they’ll necessarily find it easy to pretend it is. Anna is human too. Life hasn’t been easy for Anna and however much she might try to keep it together, it’s realistic to see the cracks showing for both of them and that’s what happens in this play.   

 

The play is by Amy-Lou Harris, who also plays the role of Anna and is one of the set designers and she chose her costume too. She has created two very distinctive and likeable characters. It almost hurts to see George and Anna together, desperately trying to connect, but six years have passed and they’re not the same people. It’s a really emotional piece of writing and it looks at a well-known situation from a completely different angle. 

 

The set, which is designed by Terasa Newton-Harris and Amy-Lou Harris, shows the dining room with the table Anna has prepared for a meal. It’s very beautiful and although I don’t know that much about fashions in design, it does have a historical sort of appearance. It is a long table and they sit at either end. Even though I am used to physical distances in online theatre (though the actors didn’t social distance so I expect they’re bubbled), I was very aware of the physical distance, which also represents the emotional distance and perhaps the distance of six years too and all the things that have changed. 

 

Amy-Lou Harris’ sister Laura J Harris is the director and also the sound designer and operator. There’s a simplicity in the production which keeps the focus on the characters, but there are certain images which we see more than once and they come to mean slightly different things as the story goes on. I really like the way sound has been used in this production. It’s hard to describe what I mean, but the sounds I heard don’t seem to be background, it’s all part of the drama and very important. It is mostly filmed as it appears on the stage, but there are some really interesting split scene moments, as though it’s saying ‘don’t just look at this story from one angle’, and some moments where the current scene kind of jumps back into the past, which is really clever. Terasa Newton-Harris, Francesca Blythin and Alice Wyatt operate the cameras and Charlotte Graves is the vision mixer. 

 

There were also some really interesting lighting moments, including some effects which I don’t think I’ve seen onstage before. The lighting is designed and operated by Alex Vickers, who is one of three students involved in this production. The others are stage manager and camera operator Francesca Blythin and deputy stage manager Matthew Pleasted. It’s great that students are having these opportunities, though you wouldn’t guess they were students because everything is so professional. 

 

Curtis Ledsham plays George, who is very charming and loving, but of course he has demons. Amy-Lou Harris is sweet and well-meaning as Anna, trying so very hard to be the perfect wife but struggling with the reality. 

 

Home, Again is a very interesting and very emotional story about two people who really want everything to be perfect – but perfection isn’t the same thing to every person.