creative arts

Albert Camus once said, ‘Impulses are the most sacred of human emotions.” On Wednesday this week, my good friend Janet offered me a free ticket for Thursday evening’s show of Lilies on the Land by The Lions Part at the Chameleon, Chandler’s Ford. On an impulse, I accepted it. I am glad I did.

The advertisement for the play stated, ‘A humorous look at wartime life, based on the real lives of the Women’s Land Army’ (WLA). After the show, I came away with the feeling that the blurb did not do full justice to the director and the all-women cast who put on a show par excellence.

“We shall fight on the beaches …” Churchill’s famous wartime speech set the tone for the evening. Dressed in costumes of wartime England, the WLA girls conveyed the ambience with skill. The sombreness of war was never downplayed, yet they managed to have us splitting our sides with clever and witty dialogues, narrating and bringing to life personal anecdotes. [Read more…] about Lilies on the Land Performed by the Chameleons – a Review

“The jasmine in one’s garden has no fragrance,” goes a Malayalam homily – meaning, we don’t appreciate what is right under our nose and seek our pleasures in distant venues. I realised the true import of this saying last evening when we went to see ‘Sherlock Holmes and the mystery at Mallen Hall‘ presented by the Chameleon Theatre Company on Hursley Road, Chandler’s Ford. The theatre is a mere ten-minute walk from my house. In the twelve years that I have lived in Chandler’s Ford, this was my first visit to Chameleon, thanks to a tip from my friend Janet on Chandler’s Ford Today.

The tickets were quite reasonably priced and the show played to a full house. The acoustics were impressive – dialogues came across crisp and clear even to those of us who sat in the back rows. In my youth, I have read several Sherlock Holmes mysteries, but this was the first time I watched a live enactment. And what a performance it was. Holmes, Dr Watson and other characters acted with grace and élan.

[Read more…] about Review: A Sherlock Treat with the Chameleons