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Winchester Festival: Festival Players Review
The Festival Players continued their examination of the city's history in Winchester and the Anarchy, a dramatic reading of one of the bloodiest conflicts it experienced.
This was a good choice, as the 12th century Civil War is much less well-known than the much shorter one in the 17th.
Henry I had no son to inherit the throne, and wanted his daughter Matilda to succeed him.
He made all the great and good of his Court swear an oath to support his wish. But when he died in Normandy she remained there and his nephew Stephen seized the Crown.
Solemn oaths were abandoned and intrigue became the order of the day.
Matilda's return to England to claim her inheritance precipitated a civil war between the two protagonists and their armies which ravaged the country.
Winchester became the central focus of the conflict owing to the role of the powerful and conniving Bishop of Winchester, the brother of Stephen.
After years of fighting Matilda retired to France and her son, the future King Henry II, continued the claim.
When the opposing armies refused to fight, he and Stephen were forced to make a deal in which the latter acknowledged Henry's claim to succeed him.
This complicated story was made clear by Ronald James's clever script, and by his direction of the regular cast of the Festival Players, with a telling economy of movement and clear delineation of the many different characters.
Mike Rogers took particular delight in his rendering of the ambitious and duplicitous Bishop of Winchester, and he was matched by the versatility of Toni Bergstrom, Ian Crowe, David Dalton and Robin Freeman.
Before an appreciative full house at the Guildhall, the roller-coaster of a journey through the intrigues, sieges, battles and twists of fortune spoke much for the power of unadorned language.
The combination of local involvement with matters of national significance engaged the attention of the audience at the deepest level. Winchester's key role meant it paid a bloody price, which gripped the imagination even at a thousand years' distance.
By Amanda Steer
11:53am Friday 11th July 2008
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