The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer, adapted by Richard Lloyd

Reviewed by Donald Madgwick for The Croydon Advertiser

Company celebrate with winning tale

The Woodman pub at Woodmansterne is the place to be this week, as Theatre Workshop Coulsdon celebrate their 25th anniversary in its gardens in splendid style, with an open-air production of a great English classic.

The adaptation is by their very own bard, Richard Lloyd, who not only directs but also, fittingly, plays Geoffrey Chaucer himself.

This is a show that gets better and better as it proceeds, ending in a riot of rudery with a couple of likely lads from t’north in flagrante delicto with the Miller’s wife and daughter.

Mr Lloyd has perhaps remembered Polonius, who was “for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps”. No danger of slumber here, as the company build up to their climax with the Miller’s own hilariously windy tale of the scholar and the carpenter’s wife.

Were we not already under the starry vault of heaven, it would bring the roof of with a clap of thunder.

The standard of speaking and declamation is variable, but the best of it brings lustre to Mr Lloyd’s racily colloquial text.

Tim Young neatly blends geniality and testiness as Harry Bailey, convivial host of the Tabard, who accompanies the pilgrims and coaxes their tales out of them.

The best and clearest of the narrators he calls on are Bruce Montgomery, a Reeve to remember; Mike Brown’s harum-scarum Miller; and Lisa Lloyd, wonderfully suggestive with her West Country burr as the much-married Wife of Bath.

The last-named contributes an ancient tale of doubtful chivalry featuring James Crouch as an over-ardent Knight, and a performance of magical mystery by Tina Bretman as the Hag who alone knows what it is that women most desire.

The same actress proves her point in the last tale, as the wife who gets her student.

For TWC’s patrons this production, which marks their 25th anniversary, is one not to be missed.

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