Comments for Don't Wake Me: The Ballad Of Nihal Armstrong
“Writing a play in verse is a tough call – that fracture-line
between form and fluency; but the author found a six-, sometimes
seven-beat line where the rhymes didn’t push speech towards
doggerel, which is so often the trap, but were laid off by the extra
syllable: ‘turned the corner’ [as it were]. I knew it was working
because I was caught up in the narrative and wasn’t listening for
the rhyme. Aside from that, it’s a very moving piece and I thought
Jaye Griffiths did a great job: not least in giving the lines some air
and finding the stresses and line-breaks that the verse was asking
for. Guy’s direction was pin-perfect — he used a light touch to
terrific effect.” David Harsent, winner of the T S Eliot prize for
poetry, 2015
Caught the production at the Edinburgh fringe on a flying visit having
picked the show at random. Boy, was I glad that I did;.I can use the
word superb, but that doesn't do any of the performance...