14th November 2021 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Live on Stage
As part of Remembrance Day commemorations in Roade, Ron Johnson wrote a five act play about three casualties of WW2, the Every Brothers, sons of a London family evacuated to our village during the war. His source was an archive kindly donated by the family to Roade Local History Society. It was staged on 9th November at Elizabeth Woodville School, Roade, before a packed audience of locals, Deputy Lord-Lieutenant Col John Royle MBE, four JPs, members of Roade & District and Duston branches of The Royal British Legion and other military and ex-military personnel.
Using a minimal, well-lit stage set, and structured round a narrator, the drama sets out the background, and then enacts events in the home life and military careers of the brothers one by one. Keeping strictly to unadorned format and delivery, script and cast avoided sentimentality and mawkishness, instead generating a cumulative sense of tragedies overtaking a very ordinary family.
It would be invidious to single out any one of the cast for special praise when each player brought a high level of competence to the part. It was an expert performance of a fine work, creating genuine emotion in the audience, and saluted at the end by that rarity, a standing ovation.