by Lillian Hellman

12th-15th November 2003
Millennium Festival Studio Theatre, Central Methodist Church, Lincoln

Vicky Ashberry made her directorial bow with our autumn 2003 production – and she certainly doesn’t shrink from a challenge!

Written in the 1930s, ‘The Children’s Hour’ is the best known work of the American playwright Lillian Hellman. It tells the story of how a malicious lie told by a schoolgirl eventually destroys the lives and livelihoods of her two teachers. Its insinuations of illicit love between two women were considered shocking when it first appeared on the Broadway stage, and when it was revived in the 1950s the play struck a chord with many audiences at a time when rumour, persecution and unfounded allegations were rife in the McCarthy era.

Vicky brought in a host of new members to take the schoolgirls’ roles and coaxed excellent performances from all of them – in particular newcomer Francesca Gugliotta, who played the central role of Mary Tilford, the disturbed girl whose lies lead to the closure of the school and the suicide of one of the teachers.

Overall an utterly convincing and deeply moving piece of ensemble theatre which won rave reviews despite attracting only our usual small but loyal audiences. The Lincolnshire Echo praised the ‘intense performances’ and predicted that audiences would be ‘deeply moved’ by the plight of the two women, excellently played by Melissa Corfield and Sheryl Tribe. The Lincoln Chronicle pronounced the show ‘brave and brilliant’, ‘hugely enjoyable’ and ‘gripping and gruelling theatre’.

Three one-act plays with supper

10-12th April 2003
Croft Street Community Centre, Lincoln

Our spring 2003 production was a new venture for us: an evening of one-act plays with supper. When one of our members thought up the bright idea most of us imagined something tasty but simple, like shepherd’s pie or curry and rice. But another of our members is a professional chef, so we finished up serving posh nosh as an accompaniment to three one-act plays.

We took the decision to stage one-act plays because our director Su Toogood was keen to enter ‘A Dog’s Life’ by Pam Valentine into the Lincoln Music and Drama Festival in March 2003. She chose a second play to accompany it – ‘Shoppers’ by Jean McConnell – and we enlisted the support of Metheringham Players for the third play as their production of ‘The Ark’ planned for performance in May featured a cast made up entirely of Common Ground members.

The three plays were all very different but sufficiently similar in tone to make for a coherent evening’s entertainment. Each is ostensibly entertaining, with scope for comedy, but each is tinged with a darker, sadder side.

In ‘The Ark’ Cecilia and her two daughters grieve for their recently departed Dad. In their own way each tries to come to terms with his death, and the strain of the situation begins to tell on the sisters before a revelation brings them closer together. By the end of the play Cecilia herself has reconciled herself somewhat to her husband’s death and begins to see how she can pick up her life again.

‘Shoppers’ apears to be a harmless conversational duologue featuring two well-to-do ladies who meet on the seafront after a hard day’s shopping at the most exclusive stores. But as the play progresses the audiences begins to sense that all is not what it seems. By the end of this short play it becomes apparent that Rosemary and Angela are in fact serial shoplifters addicted to the thrill of thieving as a way of bringing meaning and purpose to their otherwise directionless lives.

‘A Dog’s Life’ is a challenge for four of the cast who have to portray dogs waiting patiently in a dog shelter, hoping one day to be chosen by a new owner. Again, most of the cast for this play were newcomers to Common Ground and all but a couple were largely inexperienced, so were pleased with the quality of the end result.

The Lincolnshire Echo described the three plays as ‘appetising, tenderly cooked and perfectly well baked,’ while the Lincoln Chronicle declared the ‘ambitious’ but ‘totally successful’ event as ‘a five-star evening’.

For the record, Ian Smith cooked salmon with a duxelle filling wrapped in noodle paste with red pepper and mushroom mash and drizzled with red onion and balsamic vinegar gravy followed by warm polenta cake with summer berries and Cornish ice cream finished off with coffee and home-made biscuits.

by Peter Whelan

27th-30th November 2002
Millennium Festival Studio Theatre, Central Methodist Church, Lincoln

For our autumn 2002 production we chose a play with a sombre subject. ‘The Accrington Pals’ tells the story of a group of friends from Accrington in Lancashire who answered Kitchener’s call and enlisted in the British Army at the beginning of the Great War. Accrington was the smallest community in the country to raise its own ‘Pals’ battalion, and on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916 – its first major action – the battalion suffered devastating losses. Of some 720 Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 584 were killed, wounded or missing. The losses were hard to bear in a community where nearly everyone had a relative or friend who had been killed or wounded.

‘The Accrington Pals’ is based on real history, but its characters are fictitious. It is not only the story of a band of young men who enlisted and died in France; it is also the story of the womenfolk who were left behind, who grew into their new-found independence and who slowly came to realise that the propaganda they were being fed was based on lies.

Steve Watters directed a cast of ten which included experienced actors as well as two newcomers to the stage. The production was the first to be staged by Common Ground at the Millennium Festival Studio Theatre, a recently refurbished theatre space above Lincoln’s Central Methodist Church.

Those who took part and those who watched were moved by the sense of history made flesh on the stage. The Lincoln Chronicle described the production as ‘an impressive ensemble showing, bringing real credibility to the script’s everyday banter’ with ‘a range of accomplished individual performances.’ It concluded: ‘The Accrington Pals confirms the company as welcome reinforcements on the city’s drama front.’

The Lincolnshire Echo agreed that ‘the director successfully balanced the play’s action while providing a touching insight into real people’s lives.’

by Alan Bennett

28th, 30th, 31st May and 1st June 2002
Croft Street Community Centre, Lincoln

Our second production was less straightforward than our first. We had planned to stage ‘Breezeblock Park’ by Willy Russell but struggled to cast the play satisfactorily. Late in the day we pulled the plug on our original plan and looked around for a replacement. Quite soon we hit upon the idea of Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’ series of monologues which were written for television but which are often performed in the theatre.

In the end three monologues were chosen: Gaynor Little performed ‘ Soldiering On’, in which a recently widowed lady comes to terms with life without her late husband (who was not the paragon of virtue she had thought him to be); Vicky Ashberry took on ‘Bed Among the Lentils’, in which a bored and frustrated vicar’s wife finds sexual and spiritual awakening with a young Indian grocer; and Christine Bellamy, in her first major role, performed ‘A Lady of Letters’, in which a nosy neighbour and writer of poison pen letters becomes altogether happier and more tolerant after her interfering ways land her in prison.

In its review the Lincolnshire Echo described the three actresses who took on these challenging roles as ‘accomplished’ and added: ‘Lincoln’s Common Ground Theatre Company gives fresh impetus to these perfectly penned monologues.’

by Bill Naughton

27th, 29th, 30th November and 1st December 2001
Croft Street Community Centre, Lincoln

Seven short months after we first sat down in the pub and discussed setting up a new theatre group, we were on stage. In the absence of any other takers Jez Ashberry volunteered to direct our first outing – ‘Spring and Port Wine’ by Bill Naughton, a touching, comic, atmospheric ensemble piece set in Bolton in the early 60s.

Inspired by the 1960s film version featuring a quietly menacing James Mason as Rafe and a teenage Susan George in a mini skirt, Jez brought together a mix of experienced actors and outright newcomers in the company’s first cast. Ian Smith worked wonders with a tardis of a set which had to accommodate a dinner table, six chairs, a sofa, two armchairs, a television set and a bureau in a space hardly big enough for Jason Hippisley to swing his towel.

The onset of spring and a few glasses of port wine after work are what puts a spring into the step of young Hilda, but her home life is soured by the overbearing manner of her father Rafe, who rules Hilda and her brothers with a rod of iron. After a series of arguments and confrontations – and the trials of Mother, who has pawned Dad’s best coat in spite of her husband’s fanatical dislike of debt – the Cromptons manage to avoid a family break-up by finally being honest with each other.

Our first production was described by the Lincolnshire Echo as ‘a sterling performance’ and involved 28 members and friends of the company.