On the fence: Pip Cook’s Biddy, left, and Ellen Carnazza’s Buff in Badapple Theatre’s revival of Back To The Land Girls. Picture: Karl Andre Photography
BADAPPLE Theatre, purveyors of theatre on your doorstep near and not so near, are half way through a revival of one of the Green Hammerton company’s best-loved plays from its 28-year track record of original and humorous stories.
Company founder and artistic director Kate Bramley’s Back To The Land Girls is playing 16 rural locations across Yorkshire as part of a wider itinerary featuring a cast of Ellen Carnazza and Pip Cook.
“The show was inspired by interviews with a number of incredible women from Yorkshire who worked on the land during the Second World War,” says Kate. “Their comic and poignant reminiscences led me to create the heart-warming journey of Liverpudlian Buff (Carnazza) and Yorkshire lass Biddy (Cook), who arrive in the countryside not knowing one end of a cow from the other. That soon changes!
“Their camaraderie and friendship sustain them on a journey of back-breaking work, but also one of delightful independence, of dreams of fame and romance and always the hope that the end of the war is just around the corner.”
Kate reflects on a play she first staged in 2009 with music by Sony Award-winning songwriter and BBC Radio 4 host Jez Lowe. “Back To The Land Girls is such a hopeful story, inspired by the interviews I recorded with these women. It was such a privilege to speak with them, and it’s a great joy to share these tall tales once more.”
Kate Bramley: Badapple Theatre’s artistic director and writer
Extracts from three of those stories, by Pauline Dawson, Biddy Cust and Marjorie Waterhouse, can found in the official programme, by the way.
“We did four tours of the play between 2009 and 2011 and now we’re bringing it back after 15 years,” says Kate, whose company is this year’s Associate Company at York Theatre Royal. “I then wrote Lights Out Land Girls in 2013, set between VE Day and VJ Day, where they go on another adventure, trying to get to Blackpool.”
Back To The Land Girls brings together life on the farm, with American airmen and prisoners of war nearby, a brother overseas in the Royal Navy, hopes of Vera Lynn coming to town to sing, a trip to a cinema curtailed by an air raid and the prospect of a visit to the dance hall.
“They’re focused on cows, sowing onions, trying to get the mangle harvest in, with Biddy being distracted by any animal intervention,” says Pip.
“Buff pretty much gets distracted by herself – and boys,” says Ellen. “She’s a bit boy crazy, especially with the Italian prisoner of war, Giovanni.”
Ellen Carnazza’s Buff looking for an elusive mouse in Back To The Land Girls. Picture: Karl Andre Photography
“Biddy is as scared of boys as much as Buff is not enamoured of frogs in the story,” says Pip. “But I love frogs,” says Ellen. “My gran’s house was covered in a collection of frogs, bronze ones, ceramic ones. Anything frog related, she had it! I’ve inherited some of the frogs; some were donated to charity, but there are still plenty of frogs left.”
Pip chips in: “I’m probably a bit more indifferent about frogs. They’re more of a five out of ten creature for me! But one of my best friends is a dairy farmer, Harry. We spent New Year’s Eve at their place, where a calf had just been born.”
Born and bred in Leeds, Ellen has visited a few farms. “I like them,” she says. “I haven’t milked a real cow, but I remember ‘milking’ a fake one in Ripley!”
Pip says: “I feel that Biddy getting distracted by animals is exactly what would happen to me, like when Biddy is waving at a cow but it turns out to be a bull.”
Ellen adds: “I like animals more than Buff does. She likes to think she knows more than she does, but she does get stuck in on the farm and I would do that too.
Ellen Carnazza’s Buff, left, and Pip Cook’s Biddy enjoying rare access to lipstick in wartime in Back To The Land Girls. Picture: Karl Andre Photography
“In the play, the Land Girls have to cling on to the small things, rather than thinking about the future, so the dance becomes a really big thing for them. There’s an element of them being removed from the war in Yorkshire, apart from the air raid. It’s not like being in the Blitz in London.”
Pip rejoins: “But their rural world is interrupted every so often by events in the outside world, so it’s not all just farming.
“What’s really interesting is how they don’t have access to the news that we do now, so they were reliant on word of mouth and the radio, whose information was official and factual.”
Singing features prominently in the show. “In this show, it’s all happening for real, rather than having a song break to heighten the emotion in the tradition of musicals,” says Pip. “Instead, when they sing a song in the air raid, it’s to make themselves feel brave. Or later, when Buff, who has always wanted to be a singer like Vera Lynn, chickens out of performing at the hall, Biddy does it instead.”
Ellen and Pip have been on the road with stage manager and lighting designer Duncan Hands on hand since September 9, continuing their association with Badapple after Ellen appeared most recently as hot and flustered TV baking queen Petronella Parfait, disgraced and on the rapidly downward spiral in Bramley’s one-woman-but-many-parts play Crumbs and Pip toured in The Thankful Village, the pantomime mash-up Sleeping Beauty And The Beast and The Regalettes.
On song: Pip Cook’s Biddy takes to the microphone in Back To The Land Girls. Picture: Karl Andre Photography
They are into week four of the Land Girls tour. “We’ve always come away from performances thinking ‘that was a really warm audience’, with a lot of chat afterwards, like recalling how women would draw lines on their legs to mimic stockings and talking about Land Girls in their families,” says Ellen.
“They feel comfortable watching these two Land Girls, feeling they’re going on a journey with them,” says Pip. “It’s very wholesome.”
Badapple Theatre in Back To The Land Girls, on tour until October 25, including Yorkshire shows at Settle Victoria Hall, October 6, 7pm (tickets: 01729 825718); Eggborough Methodist Chapel , October 8, 7.30pm, sold out; St Joseph’s Church Hall, Wetherby, October 9, 7.30pm, for Wetherby Arts Festival (tickets: wetherbyfestival.co.uk) and Hampsthwaite Memorial Hall, near Harrogate, October 21, 7.45pm (tickets: 01423 331304). For the full itinerary and ticket information, go to: https://www.badappletheatre.co.uk/show/back-to-the-land-girls/.
Did you know?
ELLEN Carnazza will play the Ellen will play the Wicked Fairy, Carabosse, in Harrogate Theatre’s pantomime, Sleeping Beauty, from November 25 to January 17.
Pip Cook launches her own company, Paper Mouse Theatre, with the festive favourite A Christmas Carol at Micklegate Social, Micklegate, York, on December 12 and 13 at 2pm and 7.30pm.
Whichever way the cook crumbles: Ellen Carnazza’s disgraced TV baking queen Petronella Parfait falls apart in Badapple Theatre’s Crumbs