The Holly & The Ivy

Middle Ground has been touring Wynyard Browne’s The Holly and the Ivy on and off for some years but this tour has Philip Madoc newly cast in the central role. The play takes place at Christmas, 1947, in cold, snowy weather.

It’s the epitome of the three-act well-made play that used to be the theatrical norm.

Now it seems odd for there to be two intervals but, quite properly, that’s the way Middle Ground played it, allowing the pacing of its three time periods to work properly.

The setting is a vicarage with family and friends visiting for the festive period, bringing tensions and pent-up feelings that will threaten the warmth and comfort of the home. At the centre of all this is the widowed vicar, a man of beliefs and doubts, and a scholar who isn’t sure how good he is with people, who finds out his shortcomings and strengths through his own family.

What makes this solid and entertaining production work is the quality of the performances. Philip Madoc hasn’t quite settled comfortably into the role of the vicar yet but he conveys the good, but certainly not saintly, man whose convictions are capable of seeing beyond superficial appearances and of ultimately providing the strength that his family needs.

Corinne Wicks is superb as his favourite daughter, a brittle, life-damaged fashion writer whose drunken collapse precipitates the major crisis. Zoie Kennedy is very good as the stay-at-home sibling and Tom Butcher is excellent as her fiancé, a delightfully dour Scottish engineer. Nathan Hannan is just right as the still schoolboyish soldier brother.

Most of the laughs are provided by the visiting aunts, Paddy Glynn very funny as prim Aunt Bridget and Christine Drummond equally good in what amounts to the straight partner in the double act as the ever-helpful Aunt Lydia. Alan Leith simply has to be rock solid reliable as Cousin Richard and that he certainly is.

This is an undeniably old-fashioned play, performed properly in period, but it has its character complexities. This absorbing production proves that, for all its dated attitudes, this is a play that can still hold an audience’s attention, particularly when done at honestly and entertainingly as here.

Reviewed at Venue Cymru, Llandudno.