Wallingford Festival 2001

10th to 15th June 2001. at The Corn Exchange Theatre, Market Place, Wallingford.

Sunday 10th June

Oxford Libra Theatre Company	The Runaway Train by the Company
Balancing Act	Witches of East Hannay by Joe Graham

Monday 11th June

Chiltern Players Youth Group	The Bodenham Bogey by Jessica Fraser
Newbury Dramatic Society	World Premier by Charles Mander

Tuesday 12th June

Sinodun Players	Trifles by Susan Glaspell
Burghfield & Sulhampstead Players	In the Blinking of an Eye by Jeremy Hilton Davies

Wednesday 13th June

Domino Players	Not Quite Sunset by Dorothy Burrows
Bartholomew Players	The Bald Prima Donna by Eugene Ionesco

Thursday 14th June

The Henley Players	Between Mouthfuls by Alan Ayckbourn
Chilton Players	This is a Chair by Caryl Churchill

Friday 15th June

City of Oxford Theatre Guild	Extract from Hay Fever by Noel Coward
Final adjudication and prize giving

Editorial, 17th June:

Wallingford Festival

This was on last week - did you go? I only managed to go on the Wednesday, but it was a great evening. Domino Players gave a most moving performance of Not Quite Sunset by Dorothy Burrows, a local author. It was a thought-provoking play in which the reality (or unreality) of what's happening slowly dawns on you as the play progresses. The second play was Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Prima Donna by Bartholomew Players. I've managed to avoid Ionesco up to now, and I shall continue to avoid him in the future. OK, this play's a masterpiece and I'm a philistine. However, the production and the acting were excellent, and of course that's what's being judged at festivals, not the plays themselves.

This is exactly what festivals should be about - exciting new plays, and more outré plays that wouldn't get staged as part of a group's normal season. If these two productions were typical of what was on at Wallingford, I wish I'd gone to some of the other nights.