‘Talking
Heads’
by Alan Bennett
28th,
30th, 31st May, 1st June 2002
Croft Street Community Centre, Lincoln
Our
second production was less straightforward than our first. We had planned
to stage ‘Breezeblock Park’ by Willy Russell but struggled
to cast the play satisfactorily. Late in the day we pulled the plug
on our original plan and looked around for a replacement. Quite soon
we hit upon the idea of Alan Bennett’s ‘Talking Heads’ series of monologues which were written for television but which are
often performed in the theatre.
In
the end three monologues were chosen: Gaynor Little performed ‘
Soldiering On’, in which a recently widowed lady comes to
terms with life without her late husband (who was not the paragon of
virtue she had thought him to be); Vicky Ashberry took on
‘Bed Among the Lentils’, in which a bored and frustrated
vicar’s wife finds sexual and spiritual awakening with a young
Indian
grocer; and Christine Bellamy, in her first major role, performed ‘A
Lady of Letters’, in which a nosy neighbour and writer of poison
pen letters becomes altogether happier and more tolerant after her interfering
ways land her in prison.
