War of the Worlds

All photos: Ed Waring

Review by Russell Cook from Suffolk Village Info.

Captivating and a technical triumph. That’s the best way to describe the radical production of H G Wells’s ‘War of the Worlds’ currently being staged at the New Wolsey Theatre.

It’s wizardry never lets you take your eyes off the quartet on stage for the two-hour long performance.

Three of them combine their acting skills with the use of hand held cameras, allowing their images to be displayed on huge screens, with a background of the Martians and the damage they wreak during their invasion.

Set in the streets of London - and with a nudge to the racial unrest during the late 1980s and Enoch Powell’s “River of Blood” speech - this is an imaginative and immersive trip through the carnage and death defying scenes, both in the capital and along the highways and byways to the port of Dover.

Bonnie Baddoo and Morgan Bailey play a variety of individuals on Gareth Cassidy’s (aka Will Travers) journey from hospital, in his blood stained pyjamas, to the Kent port.

Will, who is recovering from a major heart attack, manages to leave the confines of his damaged hospital bed, passing through the fire and wrecked buildings, and through the underground passageways, in a bid to get to his home in Epsom. For it’s there he meets up with his wife Evie, played by Amy Dunn, and tries to persuade her to travel with him to Dover and cross the channel in a bid to escape the marauding aliens.

The imaginative and adept creative team of the production company, Imitating The Dog - ie Simon Wainwright, Pete Brooks, Andrew Quick, Abbey Clarke, Andrew Crofts, James Hamilton, Rory Howson, Davi Callahan and Ellie Collyer-Bristow - should be taking the plaudits for their eye-catching work.

There never seems to be a scene in which Bonnie, Morgan or Amy do not have a video camera in their hands, homing in on Will’s anguished, frightened-beyond-belief face and the simple props.

The performers act - while also doing their camera work - using the trickery of models, props and camera angles to tell the complex story.

Will not only faces up to the Martians and the devastation that they unleash, but also to the realisation that he and his beliefs have conjured up the world that is disintegrating before him.

It’s amazing to remember that the thought-provoking story by H G Wells was written in 1898, at the turn of the century and the closing out of the Victorian era. The author’s tale of destruction and societal collapse has produced an enduring legacy, building narrative tropes and iconic imagery that have held fast in the century-and-a-quarter since its conception, and they continue to shape stories today. When we think of alien invasion narratives - of which this is one of the earliest and most prominent - it’s likely that what we conjure in our minds is inspired, knowingly or otherwise, by the beats and descriptions of Wells’s novel: the invading tripods, heat rays and post-apocalyptic landscapes and societies.

That legacy is currently on stage in Ipswich, and this company has created a thrilling and wonderful technical performance of the classic tale.

War of the Worlds is at New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich until 14 March.

FOR SHOW DETAILS AND BOOKING LINK, CLICK HERE