Review of Junior Workshop production, September 22/23, 2000

If these stones could talk...

Stones. What stones? Millennium, perhaps? No, these stones were much older
- pre-Christian.

Julie Marshall, Sarah Hinton and writer Tony Watts unleashed strong stuff
with this imaginative angle on the planning of a holy stone shrine.

Nearly 40 youngsters aged from 7 to 18 danced, chanted and spoke their
lines with so much conviction. It might have been the sophisticated
lighting and theatrical effects, but who didn't feel a slight shiver as if
something very primeval was present?

The rivalry between the worshippers of the sun and those of the moon was
strongly sustained by the leaders, played by Heather Bullen and Sean
Turner. Toby Willems oozed authority as Merillyn the sorceror peacemaker.
And the younger ones paid rapt attention to every word. Was that clever
directing? Brilliant.

Writer Tony Watts penned some telling lines... "Why would you give us gold
to win a war in return for peace?". He craftily slipped in a quote from
Oscar Wilde: "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing".

As the animosity dissolved into a common aim and the tribes worked together to bring the stones from the land of the seting sun the story ended
happily.

I loved the great reflecting discs and the log raft, also the little
exhibition of stones in the refreshment area.

The lighting crew, dressers and make-up artists combined to produce a show
for the Junior Spotlight section of the Wrington Drama Club that keeps our
village up there in the forefront of local culture.

Rosemary Hodges