Giles Woodforde has praise for Barrie Rutter's An August Bank Holiday Lark

‘Write me a good part!” requested Northern Broadsides theatre company boss Barrie Rutter. As he explained to Christopher Gray in an Oxford Times interview, the ability to issue such an instruction “is one of the benefits of having power as the company’s artistic director”.

The challenge was taken up with alacrity by playwright Deborah McAndrew, and An August Bank Holiday Lark is the result. The title is taken from Philip Larkin’s poem MCMXIV (1914 in Roman numerals), written in 1964 to mark the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. The play commemorates this year’s centenary of that event.

But in the East Lancashire village of Rushcart, the war is not of immediate concern in the summer of 1914. Much more important is the threat posed to the village’s annual August Bank Holiday Festival, which features a wagon loaded with cut reeds parading through the village accompanied by a side of Morris Men. But it’s proving difficult to scrape a team together — many villagers now prefer to spend their annual mill holiday in Blackpool, and dance in the extravagant splendours of the Tower Ballroom rather than out in the local street.

Rutter gets the good part he requested. He is the Squire of the Rushcart Morris Men, drilling the squad with peremptory blasts on a whistle. A man of fixed views, he is apoplectic about the decimation of his sweet peas: “They must be the fastest slugs in the b****y kingdom!” he exclaims. He is also none too impressed by Frank (Darren Kuppan), the man that his daughter (Emily Butterfield) has chosen to marry.

But the sweet peas pale into insignificance as the war starts to impose itself on the village. The way this happens is predictable, but McAndrew’s script is beautifully nuanced and often very moving. Very effective, too, is the use of Morris dancing right through the play — music and choreography is by Conrad Nelson, who was tutored by the Saddleworth Morris Men. As the festival wagon parades round the village, the dancers’ clogs make a joyful, hypnotic sound, vibrantly transmitting a carefree feeling.

By the time the final dance is reached, however, the numbers are made up by women, remembering local lads lost in the trenches.

There were one or two audibility and sightline problems on opening night, but these will no doubt be quickly adjusted, leaving a most fitting centenary war memorial production, superbly performed by a 12-strong Northern Broadsides ensemble company.

An August Bank Holiday Lark
Oxford Playhouse
Until Saturday