Latest news with #ArthurBerry
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Whatever Happened to Phoebe Salt review – bittersweet 1950s tale of the Potteries
The first word ever spoken on the New Vic stage was 'Yes'. The affirmation came at the start of a poem by Arthur Berry, written in 1986 to toast the new theatre and welcome audiences to a place of 'necessary illusions'. In his native Potteries, Berry is a celebrated polymath, known for his drawings, prints and watercolours, as well as poetry, broadcasting and half a dozen plays, including St George of Scotia Road, the theatre's opening production. Appropriately, in this centenary year of Berry's birth and three decades after his death, the theatre has dug out the first draft of his final play, spruced it up and given it a belated debut. It is unlikely anyone would consider Whatever Happened to Phoebe Salt a neglected classic. Drawn with the same broad strokes and warm human eye as the sketches that line the upper foyer walls, it is a kitchen-sink drama, evoking the long-lost life of working-class Card Street, Burslem, where the pulse of a pugmill sets a relentless rhythm and the wafer-thin walls permit no secrets. Berry writes with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia: think Terence Davies's Distant Voices, Still Lives with the intensity, violence and poetry dialled down. His characters are trapped by circumstance, their lives made smaller by the need to survive. There is Nellie Salt (Laura Costello), washed out and broken, her hopes of betterment dashed by teenage pregnancy. There is her husband, Sammy (Alasdair Baker), gruff and taciturn, his emotions reserved for the care of his pregnant sow he keeps. And above all, there is Phoebe Salt (Isabella Rossi), the 'daughter of the sun' and the only colour in Lis Evans's perfectly drab 1950s set, a young woman bursting with an energy that cannot be contained. Making a debut as assured as it is bolshie, Rossi has the measure of this ever-restless teenager, bored by her faithful fiance (Elliot Goodhill), enticed by the illicit thrill of her married boss (Perry Moore), entertained by the showbiz ambitions of her stage partner (Andrew Pollard), and worth more than all of them put together. In Abbey Wright's well acted production, she rides above the perfunctory plot and heavily signalled denouement and makes it her own. At New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, until 21 June
BBC News
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Arthur Berry's last play performed in Stoke-on-Trent for his centenary
The last play written by a leading dramatist from the Potteries is receiving its world premiere as part of commemorations marking the centenary of his Berry grew up in Stoke-on-Trent and became a prolific writer and artist before his death in final play Whatever happened to Pheobe Salt is being staged at the New Vic Theatre. The New Vic opened in 1986 with a performance of one of Berry's poems by Freddie Jones, father of actor Toby city is also marking its centenary - with Stoke-on-Trent Day being held on Thursday. The production of Whatever Happened to Phoebe Salt features local Rossi, who is making her stage debut, said it was an honour."To be able to be here which is a theatre which I grew up in coming to watch shows and now to be on the stage, doing a show and for such a celebration - for Arthur - for Stoke - it is just a full circle." As well as being a renowned writer, Berry was a notable artist, using the inspiration he drew from his hometown as a thread that ran throughout his Heskins, artistic director of the theatre, said he loved the area he was from."The very first word spoken on this stage by Freddie Jones, [film and TV actor] Toby Jones' dad, was the word 'yes' as part of a poem called Yes by Arthur Berry - what a thing to be part of our history."He made these plays about Stoke-on-Trent really. The place that he loved and all of his work was about it."It's all full of the grit and humour of Stokie life." Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
