Live theatre returns to Crawley with Abigail’s Party

At first, you see the men moving the puppets, but once you’re properly into it, you don’t see the men at all. You see only the puppets – and you believe in the puppets totally.

So it will be, Pip believes, with the face masks which the cast have been wearing in rehearsals – and which they will be wearing still when live theatre returns to Crawley.

After a stint at Brighton Open Air Theatre, The Sarah Mann Company presents Abigail’s Party in the amphitheatre at the Hawth on Saturday, August 29 at 7pm.

The play is Mike Leigh’s hilarious take on the aspirations of the rising middle class in Britain in the late 1970s.

“It is just so exciting to be part of the re-emergence of theatre,” Pip says.

The production was announced within hours of Brighton’s BOAT getting the green light for outdoor theatre: “We had been ready to go for a while. We were supposed to be performing this earlier this year, from June 11 at BOAT and then at Lewes, but when lockdown happened everything came to a halt. We had not started rehearsals but we were well into the casting process, and then everything locked down. Everything was on hold, and we were just watching to see what was going on. Everybody has been through the same experience. It was really heart-breaking to just be sitting there watching our industry implode. We have just been waiting for what the government announcements would be for when we might be able to start again and get back into theatres.

“Of course I understand the reasons. I have got an aged mother. I am very well aware of all the restrictions and the reasons, but we always needed to get going again at some point. We have got to start on this new normal that we have got now.”

The point is that Pip believes we will easily get used to socially-distanced actors on stage wearing face shields. As she says, we will soon stop seeing the face masks – just as we soon stop seeing the men operating the War Horse puppets: “The metre-distancing when you are acting is something you have got to try to remember, but we are rising to the challenge.”

There are other challenges too: there are only five of them in the cast, so they are going to have to make sure that they effectively fill the space

But on the plus side, this is a great play to be staging at this time, with so many of its themes still striking a chord today, as Pip says.

“You have got a coercive relationship, you have got the gender equality and you have got the casual racism.

“You can still feel that it is a play that has got a lot to say to us now.”

The character of Beverly – whom Pip will be playing – was famously created by Alison Steadman who inevitably still looms large over the role.

“She is such an iconic character, but I want to see if I can find something new. We have had time to explore this, and we are finding lots of different things that perhaps might not be picked up normally.

“They are all such complex characters when you have got the time to look.”

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