Red Wall Community Theatre

Marking our debut at Knaresborough’s popular Feva Festival, Red Wall Theatre presented ‘A Twisted Tale’, a review in story and song of Knaresborough’s once ubiquitous linen trade. Inspired by an exhibition at the town’s Heritage Centre, to which 10% of net ticket sales will be donated, the completely original script blends the group’s trademark humanity and social ‘edge’ with wit and humour.   

The setting is a citizenship class of disaffected but spirited adolescents. Faced with a decidedly wacky - if mysterious - supply teacher, Miss Dewdrop, they enact scenes evoking personages from Queen Victoria and Lord Byron to mill worker Matthew Crabtree (‘Little Matty’) whose 1832 testimony to the Sadler Commission as to the appalling exploitation he suffered as a child helped promote reform.

Director Marie Henderson said, ‘After past performances in Harrogate and Ripon, we are excited to be bringing a show to Knaresborough which, as another ‘first,’ includes both traditional and specially composed music – and even a South Asian classical dancer!’

Below is a clip from the show featuring bharatanatyam dancer Ishita Appachanda performing Machinations followed by a review of the performance.

Review of A Twisted Tale

Red Wall Theatre must be congratulated on its first foray into writing a musical dramatisation of historical events. It did us proud. A Twisted Tale was an imaginative rendition of the lives of linen workers in 18th and 19th century Knaresborough, inspired by the recent exhibition at Knaresborough Heritage Centre.

Through the lens of a school lesson, with teacher and students, we heard and saw the story: the din of mill machinery; the exhausted faces of the workers - many of whom were children who would run, crying, all the way to work; Queen Victoria’s knickers (possibly a little artistic licence here!) ; the voices of those in power speaking for and against the exploitation of the workers. And we were treated to a beautiful Indian dance, perhaps representing the decline of the linen industry as exploitation spread across the globe to Indian cotton factory workers.

Directed by Marie Henderson, the show played to a packed house on a very hot evening as part of Knaresborough’s famous FEVA. Red Wall made powerful use of transcripts, pictures and sounds, music, song, dance, humour and pathos: impressive! Also excellent was the fact that FEVA had included this as part of a theme of important social issues which resonate today, with the equally wonderful Knaresborough Eleven, presented by Yorkshire Create - alongside Knaresborough Forest Day, which celebrated the return of some of the plundered Knaresborough Forest to the people.

Shan Oakes

The Cast