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Theatre - Tom Jones
Brighton Little Theatre are putting on a performance of Tom
Jones in the Lewes Castle Gun Garden this weekend. Nothing
to do, thankfully, with the less discerning housewife’s
favourite Welsh singer, but an adaptation of Henry Fielding’s
18th century novel about a loveable over-sexed rogue. The
novel was adapted for the stage by its director Richard Lindfield.
“We normally do Shakespeare,” he tells me, on
the phone, two days before opening night, “but we wanted
a change. I was reading the novel, and I thought it would
be perfect. Jones is quite a character. He’s desperately
in love with a woman he can’t get, so he ends up shagging
everyone he meets, without meaning to. Women just throw themselves
at him, and he can’t say no. He is a man who is described
by the narrator of the novel as being ‘born to be hanged,’
but he always manages to escape the noose.” Jones is
played by Matthew Hopwood, who played one of the Two Gentlemen
of Verona last year, and was once Jesus Christ at the Theatre
Royal.
This is the twelfth consecutive year the amateur dramatic
group have performed in the same venue. “Nowadays it’s
all miked up, so the wind doesn’t blow away the voice,”
says Lindfield. The group tend to be imaginative with the
wonderful setting – one year Romeo climbed up a rope
ladder to the bridge leading to the keep. “Bring a picnic,
and enjoy the show. We’ll give you a rapid-fire two
hours of entertainment, and then you’re out.”
Picaresque stuff. AG |
