Colne Engaine Drama Soc - Snake in the Grass

Snake in the Grass, Colne Engaine Amateur Dramatic Society, May 1, 2009
Director – Sally Nower

It is a rare treat to be asked to review a play for a group outside one’s normal circle of dramatic societies and have no preconceived ideas whatsoever. Colne Engaine Village Hall has a stage that barely warranted the name and yet on this Tardis-like acting area had been created a fantastic set including a vine-encrusted tennis court, a garden fence, summer house and even a well! Snake in the grass is a three-handed, all female play, premiered just seven years ago and is regarded as a companion piece to the ghost story, Haunting Julia. Although Snake in the grass has haunting elements to it the reasons for its dark tones lie in its subject matter – parental abuse and the inter-generational impact that such abuse can have. What appears to start as a simple blackmail plot, with Alice, the deceased father’s nurse, claiming to have written proof that Miriam, one of two sisters in the play, sacked the nurse in order to murder the father, gradually unfolds into a much more macabre plot indeed. The credibility of the performance depends very much on the ability of the two sisters Annabel and Miriam, played by Brenda Newman and Michele Jones respectively, to find some common ground after 35 years of physical separation and leading very different lives. They find that common ground as they reveal to each other the experiences of abuse by their father. Annabel escaped the physical brutality by leaving home and building a life on the other side of the world, only to find herself accepting a relationship with a brutal husband from whom she could only get attention when he made up to her after beating her. Miriam implies she was abused sexually by her father but gets trapped in a confused relationship with him until she finally drugs and kills him. Both actresses portray convincingly the experiences they endured; Annabel, sharp-tongued, reformed alcoholic, determined to rebuild and shocked at her sister’s revelations; Miriam, for too long a victim, helpless, quiescent but turned into a pre-meditating murderess, with not one but ultimately three victims. The frequent bouts of breathlessness of Annabel as she suffered angina attacks were spot on and the emotional detachment of Miriam in Act 2 allowed us to catch glimpses of the unfolding plan which she may have been hatching for years. Alice, a much smaller part, played by Sally Frost, played the threatening nurse well and coped admirably with the physicality of collapse and being dumped in the well. The technical achievements on set; the shaking leaves, the moving wind chimes, rocking horse, creation of a well that allows Alice to fall below stage, the firing tennis balls, all these worked well. There were some genuinely spooky moments although I would have liked to have seen Alice climb from the well as a heavily bloodied zombie rather than merely slightly soiled. There were also a few prolonged periods of dialogue when I could only see the back of Annabel’s head, a shame since she had an expressive face. Despite these observations Snake in the grass was an entertaining and well-conceived production that I and the rest of the full house thoroughly enjoyed.

Reviewer – Stewart Adkins