By Megan
Link: https://lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/angela
Available until: Final performance Friday 2nd April, 7pm
Angela is a very sad play in lots of ways but it’s also a really happy and beautiful play. It’s a celebration of a person and how amazing she was.
It is written by Mark Ravenhill and it’s about his mum Angela. Her parents called her Rita but she felt much more like an Angela. It’s really lovely the way most people call her Angela after she explains. I’m very lucky because my parents called me Megan and I feel like a Megan but sometimes the name you are given feels wrong.
The play is written in a very interesting way. It doesn’t all happen in order. It moves around between different times in Angela’s life. Sometimes she is a child. Sometimes she is dating the man who will become her husband. Sometimes she’s wishing she had a child. Sometimes she’s a mum with a child living at home. Sometimes she is a mum with a grown-up son. It changes a lot but it doesn’t get confusing and I think I know why it is written like this.
Near the end of her life, Angela has dementia so it’s like she gets lost in different memories at different times. The present is scary and confusing but she remembers a lot of the past and different memories come back to her. It isn’t confusing at all. It’s like having lots of different storylines at the same time and the play keeps coming back to them so you know what happened next. Sometimes it is dramatic too like when Angela gets a visit from a social worker and she doesn’t seem to be expecting her and I wasn’t sure why because I wasn’t sure when in Angela’s life the visit happened and it was really interesting the way it was slowly revealed.
There are some really sad scenes in this play but there are also lots of really happy ones. It isn’t a sad play about a really nice person has dementia. It’s a play about a really wonderful person who had a really interesting life and did lots of really good things. One of my favourite things is when she’s talking about Mark wanting to be a ballet dancer when he grew up. Angela accepts people as they are and she doesn’t mind if people aren’t conventional because she isn’t scared of it and she can see it isn’t bad. There is another lovely bit when she meets someone else with dementia.
I liked the bit where Mark dresses up as Jemima Puddleduck when he’s a little boy. That is Lottie’s favourite book and she dressed up as Jemima Puddleduck for World Book Day. She had a blue bonnet and a pink dress that looked like Jemima’s shawl and she wrote a really good book review about the way The Tale of Jemima Puddleduck is a Stranger Danger book. The story of Jemima Puddleduck is used a lot in this play. Angela compares some of the experiences in her life with the book, like the problems she had when she wanted to have a baby and when she’s older she worries about trusting people she doesn’t know. It is really clever.
The whole play is really well-written. It feels like I know Angela and I wish I really did know her because I think I’d like her a lot. It is a really emotional play and it is very loving. Polly Thomas is the director and she has given the scenes lots of atmosphere and she makes the play and the characters feel very real.
The cast is brilliant. I have heard of lots of the people and my mum has met Pam Ferris and Joseph Millson. She says they’re really nice. Pam Ferris plays Angela and she gives her lots of personality and warmth and humour and she is also really good at the sad moments like when Angela is confused about where she is and who everyone is. Joseph Millson plays Mark as an adult. It’s quite a small role because Mark mostly appears as a child (played by Jackson Laing who is really funny and he makes Mark seem like a really nice boy) but Mr Millson makes his scenes really powerful and memorable. He says one simple sentence and you can hear everything that’s behind why he’s saying the sentence.
Mark’s dad Ted is played by Toby Jones. I hadn’t seen him in anything till this year but now I have seen or heard him in four different roles which are all very different. Ted is really lovely and caring. I felt sad when I heard what he said about Mark learning ballet but Mr Jones still makes him seem like a nice person. It’s the same with Angela’s sister Julie who is played by Nadia Albina. I think this is the fourth time I have seen or heard her in lockdown too. She is always really good. Ms Albina makes Julie seem like a nice person who doesn’t have a very modern way of looking at things and that’s probably because she isn’t very modern. Ms Albina and lots of the other cast members played more than one role.
I think it would be lovely to see this play onstage but it works really well for an audio play because you can move back and forward between the different times really quickly. If it was onstage the director might want the actors to change their costumes to show they are younger or older or playing a different character. It would still be really good but I liked the way it moved from one time to another without any long pauses except for the interval. When Angela thinks about her memories she probably does move from one to another one without pauses a lot of the time.
Angela is a really good play and I hope it is
revived because I would like to see it again when I’m older so I will
understand it even better.
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