Although there was no Barry Rutter, a stalwart of all 4 previous productions I'd seen (maybe he doesn't do non-Shakespeare?), the cast included a couple of familiar faces, from Corrie and At Home with the Braithwaites, and over a dozen other actors, young and old, every one putting in great, multiple performances. This version of The Canterbury Tales keeps some of the language of Chaucer, and is told in rhyme, and thus can be a little tricky to understand, but once I'd got used to it I really enjoyed the show. Plotwise, a group of random people are on their way to Canterbury, and to entertain themselves en route they each tell a tale, and these tales were acted out by the rest of the company, so that every actor played a few different parts, as travellers to Canterbury, then as characters in most of the tales. The episodic nature of the source material and thus the play meant that some pieces were more entertaining than others. The Knight's tale was first, and I found it a bit boring and unimaginative, and was played pretty straight, so initially I wondered whether I was going to enjoy the evening. Thankfully, the Miller's tale dispelled any worries (which is good, as the two acts combined came to almost 3 hours, a long time to be bored - but then this was my last free ticket with the Under 26 scheme, so I couldn't complain) as it turned out to be a raucous, bawdy, hilarious tale of sex and betrayal - a theme that continued throughtout most of the other tales.
Once the comedy began it came it a torrent of sexual innuendo, double and single entendrés, and a healthy dose of physical comedy. The third tale, by the Reeve, was perhaps my favourite, featuring two young men and a greedy miller, plus his wife and daughter, and a nifty bit of bed-hopping and confusion. I should also mention how funny the naked puppets were in the Miller's tale - reminiscent of the puppet sex in Avenue Q! The other tales were: the Cook's tale, which is cut short for it's descent into vulgarity; the Pardoner and Summoner's tale, the former a camp, predatory queer character that stayed the right side of caricature to be palatable; the Squire has a garbled tale that is cut off in it's prime; the Wife of Bath gets a great soliloquoy before her tale of a knight trying to discover what women want; the Clerk of Oxenford's was odd and probably my least favourite, featuring a cruel Marquis who puts his chosen wife through hell for a reason that I didn't grasp; and the final tale, by the Merchant was a real winner, about a randy old knight who marries a young wife, goes blind, gets cuckolded, and then regains his sight to watch his wife getting seen to up a pear tree!
The Canterbury Tales on stage is necessarily a shorter prospect than Chaucer's original, but I'd be happy to see further tales expanded and acted out by Northern Broadsides. I particularly enjoyed their use of props and the movable stage this time round, but then they also make good use of their surroundings. The end of the play was a bit odd - it featured a song in Latin, at Canterbury Cathedral - but I suppose it made sense, even if it's not particularly an entertaining way to end proceedings.
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