THE TIMES****
Benedict Nightingale
There have been more adventurous theatrical adaptations of well-loved books. Think of what Shared Experience did with mad Mrs Rochester and her blazing attic when that company brought Jane Eyre to the stage recently. But few have gripped as much as Emma Reeves’s reworking of Nina Bawden’s tale of evacuees in the Welsh Valleys in the Second World War. If you want to take a pre-teen, maybe even a teen who still relishes a good clear story, to the theatre in the school holidays, well, Carrie’s War is probably the next best thing to War Horse.
There are no child actors in Andrew Loudon’s production, which means that you must believe that Sarah Edwardson is both the Carrie who revisits her wartime past as a wife and mother, and the Carrie who experiences it as a girl. But I suspect that she has the versatility to come on as Carrie the bent great-granny if the play were to venture into the future. Certainly, Edwardson is more than plausible as an earnest 12-year-old with the ability to win the heart of John Heffernan as a bright but gauche fellow evacuee, charm Prunella Scales as an ailing old heiress, and even manipulate Sion Tudor Owen as the religiose brother who covets Scales’s property while ignoring her.
In some ways Carrie and her balky younger brother, James Joyce’s Nick, have drawn the short straw, because their Welsh refuge is ruled by Owen’s Mr Evans, a Dickensian hypocrite who blusters and bullies, roars and domineers, and eats the children’s rations while ferociously threatening with hell fire a hungry boy who pinches the odd biscuit. But all is warmth and kindness in Druid’s Bottom down the hill, where Scales’s sad, sick, aptly named Mrs Gotobed is cared for by James Beddard’s Mr Johnny, who doesn’t let his cerebral palsy compromise his farming skills, and Amanda Symonds’s Hepzibah Green, who may be a white witch and may just be a very sensible housekeeper.
The acting is consistently excellent and the production achieves what Reeves describes in the programme as its primary aim. Does it “tell a very human story about people’s mistakes and misunderstandings”? And is that story “cracking”? On both counts, yes.
EVENING STANDARD****
Henry Hitchings
Carrie's War has to rank as one of the best books for children published in the last 50 years, and Emma Reeves’s affectionate adaptation of Nina Bawden’s 1973 novel will appeal to those who grew up with the book as well as to anyone seeking family-friendly entertainment.
The main characters are Carrie Willow (a 12-year-old in the novel) and her brother Nick, who, during the Second World War, are evacuated from London to an austere Welsh mining community.
They are billeted with crotchety shopkeeper Mr Evans and his timid younger sister Lou, but soon find themselves drawn towards the warmer environment of Druid’s Bottom, the farmhouse belonging to the Evanses’ older sister, the elusive and moribund Mrs Gotobed (a spectral Prunella Scales).
There they are reunited with fellow evacuee Albert Sandwich, as well as encountering the disabled Mr Johnny and Mrs Gotobed’s housekeeper Hepzibah Green, a spellbinding woman who is rumoured to be a witch.
Alternating between the two households, Carrie learns some uncomfortable lessons about adult domestic life.
Instead of romanticising family, the play quietly suggests some of its more perplexing intricacies, along with the tensions and imperfections of becoming (and indeed being) a grown-up.
Events are bookended by two scenes in which the mature Carrie, returning to Wales, reflects on the past and the emotions she associates with it.
The shifts in time are neatly handled, and Andrew Loudon’s production is assured in all its details. The setting is evoked through Welsh-language hymns, and the wartime atmosphere by means of period radio broadcasts.
Edward Lipscomb’s clear design contrasts the interiors of the two houses, which sandwich a symbolically scraggly parcel of Welsh countryside.
Both versions of Carrie are sweetly played by the versatile Sarah Edwardson, and there is a nicely measured performance by John Heffernan as Albert, with whom she develops an edgily intimate relationship.
As the tubthumping miser Evans, the excellent Siôn Tudor Owen resembles an extravagantly bearded Omid Djalili, while Kacey Ainsworth is touching as Lou, and there’s well-judged work by James Joyce, playing both the young Carrie’s brother and the mature Carrie’s son.
This dramatic version of Bawden’s modern classic is wholesome, imaginative and polished.
TELEGRAPH****
Charles Spencer
Nina Bawden's acclaimed children's novel was first published in 1973, when I was 18, so I missed it as a nipper and never discovered it subsequently. I therefore arrived at the final preview of this stage version expecting it to be packed with kids, only to discover that 90 per cent of the audience consisted of adults, mostly in their thirties and forties.
Watching this richly entertaining, deeply affecting show, and speed-reading the book afterwards, I realised why. This is a novel which lodges itself sharply in the memory. Though not in quite the same league as Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, or L P Hartley's The Go-Between, it is a book that hauntingly captures that thrilling, disturbing moment when childhood turns into adolescence, innocence becomes shadowed by guilt, and the world suddenly takes on vivid and disturbing new colours. It is a period to which adults are often redrawn.
For those who may be as ignorant of Carrie's War as I was, I'd better explain that the book is set in the Second World War when Carrie, aged 12, and her younger brother are evacuated to a grim mining town in Wales. They are billeted with the bullying Mr Evans, a self-righteous, Bible-bashing local shopkeeper, and his cowed younger sister Lou. The children's cramped days there are contrasted with those they spend in a big house on an ancient Druidical site, where they meet kindly Hepzibah (who may be a witch) Mr Johnny, the handicapped man she cares for, Mrs Gotobed, a rich dying widow, and Albert Sandwich, a clever refugee with whom Carrie develops a close, tense relationship.
As well as offering a vivid account of the experience of evacuees (Nina Bawden was evacuated to Wales herself), the story is part inheritance mystery, part ghost story, and part Bildungsroman. It is also a work about learning to accept people's differences, and the possibility of redeeming the past.
Emma Reeves has adapted the book with skill, making the flashback between Carrie's adulthood and childhood especially poignant, and Andrew Loudon directs a continuously absorbing production, evocatively designed and with the cast singing chapel hymns between scenes. There is a satisfying feeling that everyone involved is intent on serving the story, rather than their own egos.
The performances have a fine directness with Sarah Edwardson outstanding as both the childhood and the adult Carrie, tapping into her character's turbulent emotions with touching truthfulness. Siôn Tudor Owen makes an unforgettable domestic monster as the hideously self-righteous Mr Evans, sucking and clicking on his ill-fitting false teeth, and Kacey Ainsworth makes you feel like cheering as the repressed spinster sister who finally escapes to freedom.
Prunella Scales is spookily ghostlike as the dying Mrs Gotobed, and there's fine support from Amanda Symonds as clairvoyant, warm-hearted Hepzibah, James Beddard as the damaged Mr Johnny, and James Joyce as Carrie's greedy younger brother.
This is a funny, sad and deeply rewarding piece of theatrical storytelling – whatever age you happen to be.
When the Second World War air raids threaten their safety in the city, Carrie and her brother are evacuated to a small Welsh village. But the countryside has dangers and adventures of its own - and a group of characters who will change Carrie's life for ever. There's mean Mr Evans, kind Auntie Lou, brilliant young Albert Sandwich and Mr Johnny, who speaks a language all of his own. Then there's Hepzibah Green the witch at Druids Grove, and the ancient skull with its terrifying curse... 