At the end of the first Saturday evening performance of War and Peace the audience quickly rose to their feet to give a standing ovation. A rare occurrence in my Barn experience, and entirely deserved. At the time of writing (the Thursday before the last performance) it has not happened again: I suspect that the two halves of the play being performed on separate evenings took away some of its magic.

What made the performance so special? I can only give my own opinion, which is that the standard of every aspect of it was first-class; but above all it was Steve Thompson’s direction.

Most of the cast of 20 were all on stage for a considerable part of the play, and their entrances and exits were invariably slick and unobtrusive. That is a major directorial achievement in its own right, but the high standard of every other technical aspect of the production, whilst dependent of course on the skills of those directly involved, also owes much to the director’s guidance. And Steve’s ability to recruit the Barn’s best actors and technical members was also a factor in the success.

The lighting design by Clifton Hoyle was superb, and immensely complex. I gather there were 380 lighting cues, possibly a Barn record, and if there was any mistake I was unaware of it –
congratulations to the operators.

The music, directed by Rob Wallace, was equally impressive, much of it performed by some of
the actors: it added greatly to the excitement and emotion of the play itself. I had assumed that the costumes had all been hired, but from an after-show conversation I was amazed to learn that Tiffany Breeze, Jenny O’Sullivan and Yvonne Bartlett had designed, made or acquired nearly all of them, including Napoleon’s. I have only the vaguest knowledge of 19th-century Russian clothing, but I thought they all looked fantastic.

Some of the Barn’s most talented actors had quite minor parts in this production, another tribute to Steve’s ability to recruit the best. I won’t give a separate mention to all the cast, but it was good to see the return of Des Turner, who gave a convincing portrayal of the tyrannical Prince Bolkonsky, and of Lou Wallace as his relatively innocent seductress Mademoiselle Bourienne. Alice Croot was excellent as his much bullied daughter Maria, and her eventual conquest by Nikolai was quietly moving. Julia Riley as Countess Roskov was also moving in her subtly underplayed recital of her son’s life, and Natalie Gordon made the most of the comic but relatively minor role of Anna Povlona.

Turning now to the larger roles, Gavin Palmer gave a suitably restrained portrait of the heroic Andrei, and Christopher Wallace made the most of the vital role of Napoleon. Hattie Thompson
was entirely believable as Pierre’s serially unfaithful wife Hélène. Sean Scotchford got Pierre absolutely right: initially a rueful rake, a rather innocent admirer of Napoleon, and an equally innocent supporter of Freemasonry, he became convincingly wiser and more questioning with age.

The role of Natasha is not an easy one. She is only 13 at the beginning (though the playwright wisely keeps that fact from the audience) and is a mature mother at the end. She betrays her fiancé with a foolish affair with a worthless married seducer, but has to retain the sympathy of the audience until eventually marrying the widowed Pierre. Kizzie Hopkinson met all these challenges with great skill: I have seen her give excellent performances in other Barn productions, and I thought this was her very best.

So what of the play? I must confess here that I’m not the best judge of that, because knowing I was to be writing this review I not only read the script in advance, but also re-read a fair chunk of the Tolstoy novel on which it was based. So my opinions on the clarity of the story, and on the nature of the characters in it, are likely to have been more favourable had I not taken those steps.

On the other hand I saw and heard the audience’s enthusiasm at the end, so am pretty confident that others had the same positive reaction to it that I did.

The final question I feel bound to ask is whether the performance schedule, with only one chance to see the play on the same day, was the right choice. It was a difficult choice, and I understand why it was made, but if we ever do another four-hour play I believe it would be better to start at 7pm and have one interval, finishing at 11.