Bellringers

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Bellringers is a new play by Daisy Hall, recently a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Playwriting. The play portrays Clement and Aspinall, two friends who have been tasked with ringing the bells of a rural Oxfordshire church in order to warn of the storm which creeps closer and closer throughout the play.

The play has a brilliant sense of tension throughout as the impending threat of a ‘biblical’ storm becomes more urgent. The tension is really made by Holly Khan’s brilliant sound design which made it difficult to distinguish the fake weather sounds from the actual rain going on outside the roundabout venue.

With a piece such as this, it is crucial to highlight the cast, Luke Rollason and Paul Adeyefa portray the two friends with a great chaotic energy needed to bring out the humour of the play, I particularly enjoyed seeing their relationship develop over the course of the hour.

Hall’s writing was particularly enjoyable to me as an Oxfordshire resident, it made the strange storyline more appealing to myself. Unfortunately I have to add that this play whilst for the most part provides great enjoyment to the audience, it does outstay its welcome in parts, with 10 minutes shaved off, this could be a  West End worthy piece of theatre, but in its current iteration it isn’t (yet). I would also like to add that even though the play is on the whole easy to understand, the context isn’t fully developed leaving a handful of confusing moments, but this could easily be rectified.

Despite these criticisms, I do recommend the play which plays at the Roundabout at Summerhall until the end of the Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to the downstairs space at the beautiful Hampstead Theatre in London.