In the summer I visited the minor public school of that name, which was the symbolic setting of Alan Bennett’s Forty Years On.
Last week I visited the rundown country pile of the same name, which is the equally symbolic setting of Mike Bartlett’s Albion.
Both plays are haunted by ghosts of the First World War and both evince a strong nostalgia for the England that has subsequently vanished but, there, comparisons end.
While Bennett offered a humorous pageant of English social and cultural life, Bartlett offers a deeply affecting neo-Chekhovian drama of family love and loss.
Audrey (the outstanding Victoria Hamilton) seeks to return to her roots – literally – by restoring the celebrated garden in which she spent her childhood summers.
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By tending beds that were once red in memory of the soldiers who fell in Flanders and are now red in memory of an officer recently killed in the Middle East, she hopes to recover both her equilibrium and her heritage.
Contemporary problems intervene in the form of inter-generational relationships, unexpected IVF pregnancies and jingoistic prejudice.
Bartlett’s skill is to embody these issues in quirky but rounded characters, all of whom are superbly played in Rupert Goold’s richly atmospheric production.
Shortly after her purchase of Albion House, Audrey throws an Agatha Christie-themed party.
When her neighbour declares that he’s never read a Christie novel, Audrey’s laconic husband insists that “they’re all the same”.
He should head to County Hall, where that old warhorse, Witness For The Prosecution, is given thrilling new life in Lucy Bailey’s site-specific staging.
The Council Chamber in which Ken Livingstone once held court is now Court Number One at the Old Bailey, where unemployed Leonard Vole (the charmingly plausible Jack McMullen) stands trial for the murder of wealthy widow Emily French.
When his German wife Romaine (Catherine Steadman) testifies against him, Vole’s prospects look grim, but his barrister, Sir Wilfrid Robarts, has an ace up his sleeve.
Bailey makes excellent use of the Chamber’s central arena, in which the rival barristers (David Yelland and Philip Franks, both splendid) trade quips and jibes as they examine witnesses, and the Chairman’s seat, from which the Judge (Patrick Godfrey) presides over proceedings with the perfect mixture of geniality and disdain.
Even aficionados of the Billy Wilder film will relish this new version.
Rating: 4/5 stars
Ibsen’s The Lady From The Sea has been given an even more striking makeover by adaptor Elinor Cook and director Kwame Kwei-Armah, who have relocated the play from a small town in Northern Norway in the 1880s to a Caribbean island in the 1950s.
The drama remains largely intact and the relocation allows Nikki Amuka-Bird to give a radiant performance as Ellida, the landlocked mermaid who still yearns for the enigmatic stranger who abandoned her 20 years before.
But much of the play’s essential mystery has been lost and its balance shifted to a domestic comedy about Ellida’s disaffected stepchildren.
Rating: 3/5 stars