28th May 2025 Stonehenge

A Beautiful Thread: Thomas Hardy In Words and Music, A unique experience.
Review by Sabrina Sully, The American

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Would I like to be up close and personal with the mysterious stones of Stonehenge at twilight? Would I like to experience an evening with the great actor Anton Lesser expounding and reliving the life and works of Thomas Hardy, with live music? You betcha! When I was in my teens I knew a lady whose family were involved with the poet and novelist’s Thomas Hardy Players, as they lived in the same village. She told me several anecdotes that made me find a copy of one of his Wessex Novels, Under the Greenwood Tree, and I was hooked.

We arrived at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre in early evening sunshine, picnic’d on the seat/tables overlooking the chalk downlands, before collecting our programme (and headphones) for a very special event – Thomas Hardy in Words and Music, with Lesser, folk singer Lucia Bonbright and the Orchestra of the Swan Musicians (all 9 of them). Performed next to the very stones that Thomas Hardy christened ‘The Temple of the Winds’ and for which he had a lifelong fascination! To quote the man himself ‘the misfortune of ruins is to be beheld nearly always at noonday by visitors and not by twilight’. We were to be very lucky visitors!

Eschewing the luxury coach, we walked leisurely down the old road in the sunshine, serenaded by a symphony of skylarks in the surrounding fields – a fittingly bucolic mood-setter. Arriving at the megaliths, we spread our blanket near to the stones, vaguely in front of the stage, and cracked open our bottle of soda to await the performers while contemplating the ancient structure in the evening sunshine, and the largest rook known to man, who apparently considers the edifice his throne from which to survey and enjoy the first half of the entertainment.

Thomas Hardy’s life story was absolutely charmingly and humorously told in his very own words, from his many works, books, short stories and over 1,000 poems. It included quotes from the novels Under the Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire (A Rural Painting of the Dutch School) (published by Holt & Williams in the US only a year after UK publication in 1872), Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure, and snatches of some of his many poems, and one of my favorites, The Darkling Thrush in its entirety.

Deirdre Shields has written a clever script, and the production by David Hamblett and Judy Reaves, who like the challenge of unusual settings. As Hardy’s life and work were interwoven with music, so is this - wonderful music and superb playing. David Le Page, the Swan’s Artistic Director, has devised a musical programme in a Mellstock folk band style that combines West Gallery Music from the village churches of the 1840’s with Holst, Purcell and contemporary folk. The music weaves in and out of the story, lending mood and drama, the thread that holds it all together.

Lesser really brought Thomas Hardy to life, ably counterpointed by Bonbright. And The Mellstock Quire lived again for a truly rustic evening of entertainment. An unforgettable, magical evening that I’m sure Thomas Hardy himself would have absolutely loved.