An opportunity to hear the passion of Vita Sackville-West's poetry with new and traditional music and natural sound by Sonia Ritter and Tim Laycock will offer a rare chance to hear one of the most remarkable epic poems written in the 20th century.
Sonia Ritter and Tim Laycock will celebrate the poetry with wonderful music and sound in The Marine Theatre's presentation of The Land on Friday 28 September; offering a compelling recreation of country life a generation ago.
The poet is both the narrator and protagonist: an intimate lover of the soil who shares the tough and testing cycle of the farmer's year without sentimentality. She follows the seasons with those who work the soil, revelling and wrestling with the seasonal forces of the natural world and their astonishing beauty.
Hailed by both critics and public alike as a masterpiece, the power of The Land lies in its singular and vital celebration of rural England. Vita considered the poem to be her true claim to the status of great writer. Anyone who has a knowledge of the scenes and seasons of country life will recognise Vita Sackville West's knowledge of man and the Earth, still relevant today.
Tim Laycock is an actor, playwright and folk musician from Dorset with a particular interest in country ways, customs and traditions and at the same time become immersed in the traditional music of East Anglia and the West Country. He has provided music for many plays and written nine plays, most recently an adaptation of The Return of the Native for the New Hardy Players in Dorchester, and A Wonderful Alteration, a community play for Newton Abbot about the Great Western Railway. Tim has an international reputation as the leader of the well-known folk group the New Scorpion Band, and also gives solo performances of traditional folk songs in concerts.
Tim and Sonia first met in the Young National Trust Theatre 13 years ago, and have worked together with a mutual interest in poetry, theatre and folk music which has led to many fruitful collaborations including The Year Clock, Tim's one-man play about the Dorset poet William Barnes, which Sonia directed.
Sonia Ritter studied at Birmingham University and trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She has worked extensively as an actor in Theatre, Repertory, Television and Radio. Theatrical Parts include Shakespearean Plays and Katya's The Storm. Recent TV parts have been in soap opera and George Eliot in The Victorians. She has recently filmed 12 Books that Changed the World (ITV)
Their mutual interest in poetry, theatre and folk music has led to many fruitful collaborations including The Year Clock, Tim's one-man play about the Dorset poet William Barnes, which Sonia directed.
Tickets for The Land on Friday 28 September at 7.30pm £7.00 from TIC 01297 442138.