Christopher Gray talks to Barrie Rutter about the play he directs and stars in

‘Barrie Rutter is one of the best actors in England,” the theatrical legend Jonathan Miller told me a year ago on the eve of Northern Broadsides’ arrival at Oxford Playhouse with Rutherford and Son.

The portrait Rutter drew of an autocratic mill owner in Githa Sowerby’s great play went on to prove Miller’s point.

Rutter’s 20-plus years in charge of Northern Broadsides had proved of such value to the world of the stage, Miller also told me, that he richly deserved an honour.

Her Majesty’s summons has still not come for Rutter, though I don’t suppose the no-nonsense Yorkshireman is much bothered about that. Of more importance to him as a perk of running the company is being able to have just the play, and just the part in it, that he wants.

This has been the case with An August Bank Holiday Lark, from the pen of playwright Deborah McAndrew, a one-time star of Coronation Street (she played Angie Freeman). Deborah often writes for Northern Broadsides and is married to one of the company regulars, Conrad Nelson, who gave a sensational performance as Iago in its award-winning production of Othello starring Lenny Henry.

Barrie says: “I usually take a part when I am directing. It’s cheaper for the company because it saves hiring someone else. Besides, I love acting; I’m an actor first. I just love working on a new play. On this occasion I said ‘Write me a good part!’ This is one of the benefits of having power as the company’s artistic director.”

Barrie approached Deborah with the title of the play already decided, by him. An August Bank Holiday Lark is taken from a line in Philip Larkin’s poem MCMXIV (that’s 1914 in Latin numerals). It comes at the end of the first stanza: “Those long uneven lines/ Standing as patiently/As if they were stretched outside/The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun/ On moustached archaic faces/ Grinning as if it were all/An August Bank Holiday lark”

The poem was written in 1964, marking the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. Barrie wanted a play from Deborah to mark the centenary. “I said what I wanted it called and what it would be about, and asked whether she would be prepared to write it. She said she would.” The setting is an East Lancashire village in the idyllic summer of 1914, with everyone in the community — and especially the local morris men — excited about Wakes week and the break this would bring from field and mill. Singing, courting, drinking and dancing are the concerns of the community, unheeding of the looming war.

Barrie says: “The week is in preparation for the Rushbearing Festival, before the most important of the four-times-a-year changes of the rush flooring necessary to supply insulation in churches. The Rushbearing becomes a metaphor for the horrible events taking place far away, but which soon come to impact on the community.

“At the beginning the feeling is that ‘it won’t touch us up here’. But in 1915, as the play moves on, it gets sad, with some of the men away fighting in Gallipoli and reports of loss reaching those at home.

“There’s lots of dancing, of traditions, celebrations and remembrance. I play the squire of the village dancing team, which plays a pivotal part in the play. We all had to learn the clog dances. Conrad Nelson has danced with Saddleworth Morris and we asked one of the Saddleworth dancers to teach us.”

While the men in the production dance, the women supply the music on a variety of instruments, including accordions, banjo, violin, piccolo and drums.

Critics have been enthusiastic about the play. A four-star review in The Guardian said: “This lyrical, beautifully constructed First World War drama is a reminder not only of lives lost but of the traditions that made those lives worth living.”

The Times called An August Bank Holiday Lark “this wonderful new play. . . McAndrew delineates a host of characters with dexterity and tenderness”.

An August Bank Holiday Lark
Oxford Playhouse
Tuesday to Saturday
Tickets: 01865 305305 or oxfordplayhouse.com