The Country Wife

The stars of Suffolk Youth Theatre lit up the Wolsey Theatre on Wednesday evening with their production of ‘The Country Wife’.

The company, whose ages range from 15 to 20, earned themselves rapturous applause from the audience at the end of their lively and energetic opening night performance of William Wycherley’s play.

The play, directed expertly by Michael Platt, deals with issues of sexual repression and is not suitable for children of a primary school age, as it tells the story of Harry Horner, a ‘Rake’. A Rake is what we would recognise today as a ‘playboy’ and Horner, played by former Northgate pupil Aaron Seaman, sets out to seduce the cities privileged ladies, but doing so with the blessing of their blissfully ignorant husbands.

Horner’s exploits lead to him being stuck in a corner. Hiding his many women in closets becomes the norm as it appears that even master of seduction Mr Horner has bitten off more than he can chew.

The plot thickens as Horner becomes involved with Mrs. Margery Pinchwife, wife of Mr Pinchwife, played by Lucy Tomlinson and Alfie Harries respectively as well as Lady Fidget (Nancy Smith), wife of Sir Jasper Fidget, played by Robin Dicker, who was excellent in the role.

Meanwhile, Alithea, the sister of Mr Pinchwife, has her own choice to make, in choosing to marry either Mr. Sparkish, played excellently by Joe Reed who put on a lively and engaging performance, or Mr. Harcourt, played by 20 year old Edmund Crosthwaite. One cast member said of Reed after the show that “From the first rehearsals I said to myself, he's going to be the significant role that everyone talks about after the show; his presence onstage is amazing”.

The audience will be captivated and drawn in as the play, which is fast paced and features many enjoyable songs, all performed by the cast using their own voices and playing their own instruments, goes on before reaching its conclusion.

Tina Baston, who gave a first-rate performance as Alithea thought the opening night went well and said “It was so satisfying having an audience to feed off their reactions or even just their presence made a difference and reminded us why we’d worked so hard for six months. Director Mike Platt said it was our best performance, so it was good to impress him”.

However, Miss Baston, 18, went onto concede that there is room for improvement: “There's always room for improvement. But I think every night will be different, yet equally as successful as each other - it all depends on the encouragement of the audience, along with our interpretation of the lines that night! Spontaneity, particularly through physicality, can be really effective at times, especially in a Restoration Comedy like this”.

Sixth Form College Colchester pupil Tina finished by saying that she was looking forward to the rest of the performances and said “It's all so exciting and I’ll miss it so much when it's over next week! We've got such a great connection to each other as we've shared experiences and are of the same age group”.

Bobby Zamora - England's Number Ten

Well, here I am, presiding over my own blog...I shall try to not let the power get to my head. And now I’m hit with a new problem...what to write about. Well folks, I thought I would begin by answering one of history’s age old questions, one which has caused much debate and argument over the past centuries...or at least the past four months. Many ill informed, glory hunting football fans have taken the somewhat delusional view that, despite only scoring one goal of any note since 2004, in the Manchester derby, that the once great Michael Owen should still go the World Cup. For those of you who know me well, you fully know that I somewhat disagree with this view.

Now why, pray tell, should we take a man whose best skill at the moment is keeping the Manchester United bench nice and warm for the rest of the squad when say, oh I don’t know....players like the younger, fitter Robert Lester Zamora, or Fulham striker Bobby Zamora, to you and I, are scoring weekend after weekend after weekend, but are being overlooked simply because they don’t play for a glamorous enough club. It’s about time egos and reputation stepped aside to let the form players in the Premier League stand a chance.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Michael Owen was once one of the greatest strikers to ever grace the Premier League, yet the only running he does these days is down to the bottom of his drive to collect the newspaper. At the time of writing, he hasn’t started a first team match for Manchester United in four weeks and when brought off the bench at the weekend, couldn’t even score against League One Leeds United, a team two divisions below United in the football Pyramid. Meanwhile, 24 hours earlier, Bobby Zamora was busy scoring the winning goal for Fulham against Swindon Town, also of League One.

Fear not statistics lovers, for I am about to pitch at you some match winning stats. Bobby Zamora has outscored Michael Owen in every domestic competition the same two players have played in so far this season. Even in Europe, Zamora has scored the same amount of goals as Owen; they both have four each. Overall, Zamora is already into double figures in the Premier League on 11, while has been Owen lingers behind on a measly 2. Naturally, Owens overall goal scoring figures have to be considered, but he has significantly tailed off in the last few years, while this season especially, players like Zamora, Darren Bent and Jermain Defoe have begun to prosper. Any England team of the next 5 years onward is going to be Rooney plus one. Of course, this leads to the argument, which strikers should we take to the World Cup...and another teaser....how many? Many have suggested that four would be enough, but the Theo Walcott debacle of 2006 proved that four strikers simply aren’t enough. It is my personal view that we should take Rooney, Crouch, Defoe, Bent and Zamora.

However, I am not deaf and I hear many heckles from you Owen fans out there, no doubt politely questioning my reasoning and sanity with these choices. Well, just in case I haven’t provided enough pro Zamora stats and facts for you, I shall continue. Michael Owen has been about for a long time and teams have worked out how to play against him. Now he has lost his blistering pace of old, he is very much a 6 yard box predator. Simple enough hey? Not only is Owen slow, he is also short at 5 foot 9 and also not too strong. We don’t need our striker being marked out of the game every time just by a bit of simple man marking in and around the box in the World Cup quarter finals do we? Essentially, it would be like playing with 10 men. Now, same scenario, yet the England shirt read’s ‘Zamora 10’ on the back. Now we have our wild, creative animal in Rooney, being paired with a man who is equally strong, fast, inventive and passionate. It would be far more difficult to man mark the much stronger Zamora and at 6 foot exactly, he would give us much more presence in the box, at corners especially. Furthermore, given that he is new to the international scene, teams wouldn’t know how to play against him, thus giving us the surprise factor too. By the time they have worked out how to stop Zamora, the World Cup will be locked up safely in the FA headquarters in Soho Square.

But hey, these are just my own thoughts and I want England to win the World Cup just as much as the next guy, but I truly believe that the inclusion of Zamora over Owen would have more pro’s than con’s and would truly benefit England in South Africa. We should be picking players on current form and not because of past glory and reputation. Hope you enjoyed reading this Mr Capello...