Change

Until this evening I had never been to Chipping Norton, not even to its theatre. I took its bad reputation for granted and I wasn't interested. Allegedly, it is where David Cameron (Brexit ex-Prime Minister), Jeremy Clarkson (misogynist motorhead) and other over-privileged parasites live and organise Cotswold weekends for their cronies. Except, I have it on good authority (the friend with whom I went to the theatre this evening, who has reason to know), that although they live not far away, they do not support the town, do not use its shops and do not even throw any goodwill small change in the direction of its community activities. And some of its pretty Cotswold cottages hide real deprivation.

The play we saw, Barn Dance by Mike Bartlett, is about the history of an Oxfordshire barn. It started in 1939, when a young lad - whose impoverished family had had to sell most of their farmland and buildings but, at that point, not the dilapidated barn - was agonising over whether to sign up to fight in the Second World War, and it jumped around in time to now, when a wealthy Londoner was buying and moving into the barn, by now converted and with underfloor heating.

We were very close up to the story as all the auditorium seats had been removed and we were sitting on crates among the actors, both professionals and members of the local community, who occasionally asked us to move as they needed the space or even what we were sitting on.

In the interval, my companions and I, who have seen and loved Mike Bartlett plays before, were uncertain. Where was it going? What was it saying? Was anyone from the earlier time appearing in the later time and if so who?

When we went back in, all the crates had been moved. Other audience members were similarly disconcerted by not being sure where they should be and there were some tussles over 'my place'. Oh, clever!

The second half pulled people, privilege and poverty together into a moving insight into "how a rural community changes over time, what we hold onto from the past [and] what we have to let go of, in order to have a successful future,"* and by the time a local women's morris side danced the close and we were all served free drinks, I was in tears.

Mike Bartlett, as ever.

(*his words)

I think I'll be going back to Chipping Norton.