Review of The Summer Set at The King Arthur on Saturday 1st October 2011

The Summer Set was first performed in Taunton in 2008, and due to its success, the format was resurrected by the Brewhouse Theatre for another short tour.  I went along to the King Arthur to watch one of the four performances held there this weekend.

The 2011 show features a main cast of 4 core members, 2 men and 2 women who all reside in Somerset.  Filippo Fiori hails from Weston-super-Mare; Clive Linthorne was brought up in Shepton Mallet but now resides in Taunton; Kimberly Van-Stein lives in Durston (and formerly in Taunton), and Angie Ward lives in Creech St. Michael. In addition a a fifth local person is recruited from each of the five towns it is performed in.  For Glastonbury this was Stuart Packer who was brought up in West Pennard but now lives in Street.

Although the King Arthur's Excalibar was far from full with less than 1/3 of the seats occupied, this didn't affect the performance of the play in which each person delivered autobiographical monologues of their life in Somerset and described what the county means to them.  The opening saw the quintet arrive on stage, dancing along to music and wearing kitchen aprons. They donned rubber gloves and between them, created mounds of bread dough, throwing it backwards and forwards to each other before placing it into a couple of working ovens at the rear of the stage.

A short film follows about each actor in which they talk about their homes and families. They each take turns in talking about their lives, delivering warm and touching monologues about their favourite places and events.  Collett Park in Shepton, The Quantocks, Weston-super-Mare and Yeovil Town Football Club were all spoken about with great fondness, and naturally Glastonbury featured heavily too. Angie reminisced about the Extravaganza; Clive told us how he'd attended the first Glastonbury Festival, where he fell in love with the singer Melanie (whose song "I've got a brand new pair of roller skates!" was of course later Wurzelised!) and Stuart described beautifully his love of The Tor and how seeing it in the distance welcoms him home when approaching Glastonbury after a time away.  There's stuff from the past with the 1st and 2nd World Wars and stuff from the future as with the World's population due to reach 7 billion later this year, a future without oil and airplanes.

Intertwined with these monologues, heart warming and humorous scenes are performed as the cast act out meeting their first loves which, as in many cases didn't always turn out as expected.  But it wasn't all about them; the audience was given time to interact too; we were encouraged to discuss the legalisation of drugs and obesity in a couple of unrehearsed pass the stick debates, while in another nice touch, at the half time interval the bread that had been baked was shared out between actors and audience alongside some local apples, cheese and pies.

Cheerful reminiscence from the actors however gave way to heart wrenching sadness; Stuart recounted a dark and violent tale of how he fell out of love with Glastonbury, while in the final monologue, Angie described how she sought refuge in Somerset following a descent into drug abuse.

Living in Somerset as I do, it is sometimes easy to forget what the county has to offer.  It is easy to take things for granted and not appreciate our surroundings when the daily grind wears us down, and having witnessed my county and my home through the wide-open eyes of these five quite different individuals I came away feeling quite elated.