John Osborne - Norwich : A Love Story
A show packed with moving words and memories about the city we love.
Norwich Theatre
John Osborne once won a competition on John Peel's radio show. The prize was a big box of records, awarded to him for the winning testimonial that the John Peel Show provided “Records that you want to hear, played by a man who wants you to hear them”. Twenty two years later, and Osborne is premiering his newest theatre show, 'Norwich : A Love Story', at a sold-out Norwich Playhouse. It is a show packed with moving words and memories about the city we love, from a man who has clearly grown to love it too.
By way of an introduction, Osborne begins with three short poems. Each is delivered in his gentle yet purposeful style, words and phrases punctuated with carefully placed pauses that magically tranform prose into poetry, stories about walking out to surrounding villages, pubs that have disappeared from the city, and an urge to learn about astronomy and the stars.
Special guest Jess Morgan is introduced, and performs four brand new songs – just her, her acoustic guitar, and a voice that has become instantly recognisable to Norwich music fans over the past decade and a half. Jess will be performing 'The Starling Hotline', her brand new storytelling show about climate, community and family at Norwich Arts Centre on July 21st.
During the interval we are played vintage recordings of Norwich-born jazz singer Beryl Bryden, and also from Osborne's all-time favourite band Bearsuit (also from Norwich). The second half of the show then reconvenes with what is possibly the greatest poem that will ever be written about the North Norwich recycling tip. Entitled 'Nice Atmosphere At North Norwich Tip' it is classic Osborne, picking out the essence of the sublime and the ordinary, but delivering it with love and a keen sense of purpose.
And then it is on to the evening's 'pièce de résistance', the Love Story itself - a wonderfully constructed tale that begins with Keely Corbett's journey from Dunfermline to Norwich to be with the man with whom she has fallen in love. He is a chef at a Norwich curry house, a man who arrived in this country as a boy of 13, unable to speak English, but who carved out his own award-winning place in Norwich life. Both characters arrive as strangers, but each is welcomed and accepted into fine city life. Keely's guardian angel is Annie, the 77-year old Norwich born-and-bred co-worker at the hotel where she finds work as a chambermaid. She also befriends Jade on reception, and receives life advice from her kindly Norwich hotel manager.
But, to the strains of I Am Kloot's 'From Your Favourite Sky', the story turns. Keely finds herself alone again, but is saved by the strength of the friendships she has formed since arriving in the city. 'Norwich : A Love Story' becomes a strikingly moving and compassionate tale, beautifully delivered by Osborne, pulling together so many threads of Norwich's history, culture and its reputation as a City of Sanctuary, and yet placed so firmly in the present.
Augmented with vintage video of the city and its trams, black and white photographs from the archive of George Plunkett, and lashings of love and nostalgia, 'Norwich : A Love Story' becomes a heartfelt tribute to this proud city and its glorious tradition and history, and its well-earned reputation as being somewhere that strives to 'do different'. And that's why we love it.
