Review: Bard in the Yard at Ilkley Manor House

BARD in the Yard’, a joint venture between Ilkley’s Playhouse and Manor House, provided some much-missed succour to an audience otherwise starved of live theatre.

Over two afternoons around 20 actors from Ilkley Playhouse presented monologues, soliloquies and epilogues from Shakespeare, in the forecourt in front of the Manor House.

Often, in isolation, the speeches out of context can be hard to follow, however, these courageous and intelligent performers were able to introduce their pieces and explain the origins and the parts of the plays from which they came, which is a huge skill in itself.

In programmes compiled by Andrew Leggott, the monologues followed each other seamlessly and what became really clear as the performance progressed, was that each actor had found a speech which was well suited to themselves and to which they could bring real meaning – and what a joy it was to hear the language so well spoken.

On Monday afternoon we were treated first to the opening speech from Richard III given by Eoin Howe, who had such a convincing limp that it was a relief to see him well later on. We enjoyed Livy Potter’s ‘Seven Ages of Man’ from As You Like It and Sarah Potter’s speech from A Winter’s Tale; Patrick Hebbert gave us Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, Jay Cundell-Walker was a highly spirited Nurse from Romeo and Juliet, whilst Jack Humphrey’s Hotspur was as ferocious and determined as a battle-ready soldier should be. Pieces from Much Ado, Julius Caesar and Macbeth followed on until finally Beth Roberts performed engagingly and comically, the epilogue from As You Like It. This was the second of two performances and I feel sure that audiences will have enjoyed equally their experiences on Sunday.

It was little reminder of how much we are missing live theatre - let’s hope that it won’t be long now until we can enjoy it again.

by Becky Carter