A trip to the theatre and the Easter bunny spotted in Australia

Hello all, I hope you are enjoying the Easter weekend as much as we are. We had a lovely chat with our granddaughters in Australia on Saturday morning. They were eagerly awaiting a visit from the Easter bunny and very excited to tell us all about it. Towards the end of the conversation Zoe (the eldest of the two) started to tell us about a visit to the dentist. “Nanny” she asked “did you teach daddy to ‘spit out’ after he cleans his teeth?” I replied that yes, I did, and she then said the dentist said you shouldn’t do that, and although she had told daddy, he was still doing it!  I'm sure she thought it was time for me to take daddy to task, but I don’t think he would appreciate a lecture from his mum.  [Steve, if you should happen to read this, you have been told.]  😊

I promise to stop going on about Easter, but I thought you might like to see this lovely picture of the Easter Bunny as painted by Lilly (the younger of the two girls) which arrived in the post on Saturday.

The Easter Bunny as painted by Lilly age 4, a good likeness I think you will agree.

This is Lilly on Easter Sunday afternoon. I can’t be sure she is holding the Easter bunny, but it’s possible – right?

... and there was you thinking eggs came from chickens. 

Enough about Easter...

One evening last week, Terry and I went along to see a new play by Barney Norris. Echo’s End is a not-quite-love story set on Salisbury Plain during the First World War.

John and Anna (played by Tom Byrne and Katie Moore) are childhood friends, living in a farming community in the Wiltshire countryside. Their parents expect them to marry but although John loves Anna, Anna doesn’t love him back. With his advances rejected John enlists, and Anna finds comfort in the arms of an injured New Zealand soldier based in one of the camps on Salisbury Plain. Jack (Oliver Hembrough) is a different breed of man, unsentimental and mature.  While Anna's father Arnold (David Beames) barters with Jack for food that was once easily obtained, Anna is slowly falling in love.

This is a story without a happy ending, tender, dramatic, beautifully designed and well worth seeing if you get the chance.

I’ve always wondered if my grandfather or any of my uncles did any of their basic training on Salisbury Plain. They all served in France during WW1 and several of them didn’t come back, which made this story all the more poignant for me. 

Award-winning author and playwright Barney Norris
was born in Chichester in 1987 and grew up in Sussex,
London and Salisbury. A graduate of the universities of
Oxford and Royal Holloway, his poetry, stories and other
writings have been published in various magazines. His
first non-fiction book Bodies Gone: The Theatre of Peter Gill
was published by Seren in 2014. His debut novel
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, became a Guardian,
Daily Mail and Evening Standard Book of the Year.
His second novel will be published in January 2018.
His debut full-length play Visitors won the Critics Circle
Award for Most Promising Playwright. He was also
shortlisted for the prestigious Evening Standard
Theatre Awards for Most Promising Playwright,
the Writers Guild of Great Britain 2014 award for
Best Play and the Best New Play Award at the
Off West End Theatre Awards 2014.

Did the Easter bunny visit you? Can you remember the last stage production you saw? Did you enjoy it or is the theatre not your thing?