To end the Saturday of the Spring Fair, Barbara Alden poured out for us a joyful flood of music and poetry, lore and legend to celebrate the month of May. Like a swollen river, the stream brought with it an astonishing flotsam of facts and curiosities from all over the world. There were so many items on the programme that it looked as if we might be drowned by all that information, but the enthusiasm and energy of all the performers (of almost every age from under seven to over seventy) effortlessly buoyed us up to float happily along the tide. Next to me on the front pew were two lively little sisters, neither of whom could have been as much as six; surely they would never sit the whole evening out… but they did, and when the interval came, they absolutely refused to go.
A great part of the charm, of course, came from the music, which was often curiously familiar though never trite. It was almost as if the melodies had been distant members of our own families, individually hard to identify but all with the hint of those beloved features to convince us that we must have known them for a long time. The singing was simple and pure and true, resting modestly on the notes rather than forcing them, and almost, but not quite, inviting us to join in. Only three singers—Jolyon Bohling, Sarah Day and Paul Robinson—were listed in the programme and only three musicians—Sarah Day on the violin, Jenny Lupa on the guitar and David Moore on the piano.
This was a little misleading, however, for David Moore and Barbara Alden also sang from time to time, and there was delicate solo singing from Evelyn and Louise Fitzpatrick and Victoria Scott-Linden, three members of the Junior Choir, who all joined with them and sometimes with the rest of the company in a remarkable series of choruses. There was even dancing—round the Maypole of course but in other rituals as well—from Camilla Blakesley, Abby Jackson, Nastassia Kazanskaya, Eleni Pistikopoulos and Saskia Zandstra.
The range of the readings was extraordinary. Annie Duarte gave us the first surprise by a reading from The Parliament of Fowles by Geoffrey Chaucer in which her accent seemed hardly to have moved from Anglo-Saxon. Then we were treated to a miscellany of legends about the Goddess Maia, among which Simon Malpas read a Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Next Adrian Hughes gave us The Pleiades, Sarah Day a poem by Sappho, called The Moon has Set, Stephen Clarke followed with an extract from Ovid’s Fasti, and Jolyon Bohling with a translation from a 15th-century block-book on Mercury.
Just as we thought we had worked out the system, Simon was back to take us unawares with a wry piece by O’Henry, the whole company joined in part of John Clare’s May, Judy Burgess and Adrian spoke a modern poem called Beltane’s Promise, and suddenly we had music of Provençal troubadours from the 12th century. By this time, it became clear that there was no hope of maintaining a detached, intellectual attitude to the entertainment; we had to throw ourselves into it with the abandonment of an old-fashioned waltz. And so the fun whirled round us through everything from John Milton to an Internet blog, with sudden shocks like the frightening company number when young Matthew Gardner became a child stolen by the fairies.
The second act went by the same wild formulae as the first, but the tone had subtly changed. We still had a generous helping of legend and fact, but questions began to be asked. Barbara read The Trees, that disturbing poem by Philip Larkin, and in answer to Herrick’s
‘Nay! not so much as out of bed
When all the birds have matins said?
she came back again with an irritable riposte from Gail White: Corinna’s Not Going a-Maying. In fact there was a lot of fun to be had at the expense even of Tennyson, when The May Queen was split into a mutual challenge between two would-be May Queens, ready to fight it out like queen bees.
Finally they all joined in a grand finale, the Gesta Grayorum, taken (of all times and places) from the Christmas Revels of Gray’s Inn in 1594. Please don’t ask me to repeat all the fascinating ideas that were crammed into the hour and a half of that bubbling performance, but they finally erupted by the Maypole suddenly coming to life, offering up a spirited nymph’s head and joining in an eccentric dance. In spite of the script, the players weren’t really trying to teach us anything, except perhaps how to enjoy ourselves, and there they were undeniably successful.
Make Way for Merrie May
Bill Fry