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Review by Rachael Mitchinson
 The
latest production of Arnold Wesker’s famous 1950s play, Roots, was
performed for the press on Monday 4th February at the Royal Exchange
Theatre in Manchester.
First performed way back in 1959, Roots certainly made a strong comeback
here some 49 years later.
The audience was greeted with a strong smell of liver and onions, as
they wandered in to be seated for the evening performance.
The modern cast of Roots consisted of a mixture of ‘well-knowns’, such
as Denise Black who was once in Coronation Street, and some graduates,
but nevertheless, the standard of acting was extremely high.
Young 20-something, Beatie Bryant, eloped to London to find a better
life and fell in love with an upper-class socialist. Roots sees Beatie
return to her Norfolk roots three years later to visit first her sister
and then her parents in the hope of introducing her fiancé to the
family.
In contrast, Beatie’s sister, Jenny Beales, has spent her entire life in
the Norfolk countryside, having an illegitimate child, and then hastily
marrying Jimmy Beales. The Beales’ conversations have the audience in
stitches, pulling fun at Mother Bryant throughout the play, who puts the
pain in her husband’s back down to indigestion:
Jimmy: Don’t be daft.
Jenny: That’s what I say. Blast, mother, I say, you don’t git
indigestion in the back. Don’t you tell me, she say, I hed it!
Jimmy: What heven’t she hed?
Meanwhile, Beatie spends the entire play quoting her beloved Ronnie,
claiming she is ‘living her dream’. The play is a tongue-in-cheek,
clever portrayal of the way the country changed after the Second World
War.
If you enjoy going to the theatre and leaving deep in thought, I
thoroughly recommend going to see ‘Roots’.
• Roots is on at the Royal Exchange, Manchester until the 1st March
2008.
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