Show brought tears to eyes
- By Sue Lupton - Friday, September 18, 2009
 EXTRAORDINARY Island talent was on show
at Quay Arts’ Anthony Minghella Theatre last week. RedTIE
Theatre’s performance of The Long Road was a powerful, harrowing
piece of drama that brought tears to the eyes of more than one
member of the audience.
Shelagh Stephenson’s script deals with a
family’s grief following the fatal stabbing of 18-year-old
Danny. The director was Joe Plumb, one of several brilliant
youngsters involved in the performance. The RedTIE group runs
workshops for young people, encouraging creativity and
self-expression through drama. With its productions, it aims to
raise awareness of social issues.
One of the organisations backed by
RedTIE is Help2Grieve, a new group to help bereaved children and
families.
With knife crime constantly in the news,
The Long Road takes a long, hard look at how it affects those
left behind.
Helen Reading, RedTIE group leader, was
utterly convincing as Mary, Danny’s devastated mother, who is
driven to try and understand why her son was killed by a young
stranger. Her real-life husband, Steve, gave an equally strong
performance as Danny’s father, John, who tries to deal with the
loss by running and drinking. Danny’s brother, Joe, was played
by Henry Vince, a former Carisbrooke High student, now studying
drama at Exeter University. He had witnessed the murder, which
he recounted in an incredibly moving monologue at the opening of
the play.
The killer, Emma, a
damaged, drug-taking teenager, had stabbed Danny late at night,
when he refused to give her money. Superbly portrayed by Katy
Rawlinson, a Carisbrooke High student, Emma is cocky, gobby,
foul-mouthed and slightly pathetic. A prison therapist,
Elizabeth (Maria Wilkinson), arranged for Mary to visit Emma in
prison and, though her first visit was a disaster, a turning
point came when Emma admitted she did not mean to kill Danny and
she did not read Mary’s letters because she was illiterate.
Although Mary and Joe cannot forgive her, they start teaching
her to read. By the end, the family is on its way to recovery
and Emma is starting to turn her life around.
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