Wanstead Theatre Co will mark the VE Day anniversary with an adaptation of a moving wartime play, and in a truly special moment, the playwright is flying in from New York to see it. Fiona Gordon reports
One of our slogans we like to use here at Wanstead Theatre Co is ‘for the community, with the help of the community,’ as since our very first production we have relied on the kindness of Wanstead residents and businesses to lend us their venues, props, costumes and general expertise. In short, we couldn’t do our plays without our wonderful community.
For our fifth production, we knew we wanted to do something very special for the 80th anniversary of VE Day. So much is going on in Wanstead for VE Day, most of it on 5 May to tie in with the early May Bank Holiday, and we wanted to be part of it too!
After reading every play written or set on the Home Front in wartime, we finally narrowed it down. And once again, our community stepped in, this time our church community, who offered us their beautiful buildings to perform our next show.
The first option – a 1940s farce set in a church with too many vicars and an escaped Nazi on the loose – would have been perfect at Christ Church or Wanstead United Reformed Church, but we were unable to get the rights. The second option – a love-letter drama between a soldier and a girl who have never met – would have shone under the high-tech lights at the fantastic and soon-to-be premier performance space, The Wanstead Curtain in the old Hermon Hill Methodist church but, again, the rights were unavailable.
Our final choice, See Rock City – a love story that follows the lives of ordinary folk left behind in WWII – was a good choice to perform at a series of VE Day parties at Our Lady of Lourdes parish centre, but it wasn’t exactly straightforward. Originally set in America, we asked for permission to re-set it in England as we felt our community would be able to see their own parents’ and grandparents’ lives in the truly universal characters and story. And, so thrilled is the award-winning playwright (Arlene Hutton) with our British adaptation, she has decided to fly in from New York especially to see it!
Wanting her to see it in its best possible light, our impossibly wonderful community has once again stepped into the breach! Cue, literal, lights, set, action! The Wanstead Curtain, The Wanstead Fringe, lighting experts and staging wizards are all helping to turn the Our Lady of Lourdes parish centre into an English garden with a fabulous VE Day party in the interval.
We are so grateful for this support and truly hope we can fulfil our side of the slogan. For the community, with the help of the community has never felt so important.
See Rock City will run at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Centre from 5 to 11 May with a special matinee on VE Day itself for older community members. For more information, visit wnstd.com/theatre
