Arundel Players bring Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie to the stage for the Arundel Festival

SussexWorld

Performances run from Saturday, August 17 to Saturday, August 24 at 7.30pm at The Priory Playhouse Theatre, London Road, Arundel, BN18 9AT (tickets on 07523 417926 and https://www.ticketsource.co.uk).

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor for Sussex Newspapers. Lovely

00:07this afternoon to speak to Deborah Addycott. Now Deborah, you are in the Arundel Players

00:12Arundel Festival production, which is Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie. Now it's a book that

00:17we were all brought up on. Were you brought up on Cider With Rosie?

00:25Not quite, no, unfortunately not. I had heard of it, obviously, before.

00:30So you were coming to it relatively fresh with this one, then?

00:35Yes, absolutely, yes.

00:37And what's the pleasure of the story? What makes it such a good story, do you think,

00:42and such an enjoyable show?

00:45I think, I mean, it's a lovely story. I mean, the words are beautiful, as I'm sure they

00:52are in the book. It's very sort of lyrical, very sort of poetic, his description of everything

01:04and the characters in the village and of his mother and his brothers and sisters. And it's

01:14sort of just, it's almost sort of painted with a sort of, I think, slightly rose-tinted

01:19glasses type.

01:20There's a nostalgia, isn't there? Because it's the world that's gone, isn't it?

01:27Yes, yes. Before all the cars and everything else sort of took over, really. So, yeah,

01:34and it's obviously set just after, it begins the year before the end of the First World

01:42War. So you're in sort of, you know, that sort of time period.

01:46And it goes through to the early 1930s, doesn't it, I think?

01:49That's it, yes. Yes, we're sort of just doing a little patch of it in the play.

01:55And who are you playing?

01:57It just gives you a bit of a feeling.

01:59Who are you playing?

02:01I'm playing Mother.

02:03Are you? Oh, my goodness.

02:05Yes.

02:07And what kind of mother is she?

02:09Oh, she loves the children very much. I mean, she married her husband, and he'd already

02:11had children. In the play, we don't see all the children. I think she had about eight.

02:17I think there's about eight in total, but we only get to see six in the play version.

02:26I know. There's going to be a lot of children.

02:28I mean, she loves the children very much, but she's sort of quite sort of flighty, and

02:32she's not very good with money. I think it's because the father leaves Laurie and the rest

02:41of the family when he was three, so he only sort of sends them a little bit of money,

02:47and she's really left to sort of fend for herself with all these children. That's why

02:51they sort of move into this little cottage, really.

02:54It's going to be a lot of work.

02:56You know, it's hard, but she loves the...

02:58She's not, as I said, she's not very good with money, and she ends up, because she loves

03:03China and all that sort of thing, she loves going to the sales, and she loves sort of

03:09buying things. Unfortunately, the children sort of get neglected in the clothes and

03:14boot department or for other sort of necessities while she does these sales, but at the end

03:21of the day, they know what she's like. She loves telling stories, and yeah.

03:26Fantastic. Well, it sounds brilliant. Lovely to speak to you.

03:31Okay, thank you.

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