Actor Robert Powell uses Rudyard Kipling’s contrasting memories of idyllic India and the horrors of the First World War as the basis for a theatrical journey through the author’s life, staged at the Connaught Theatre on February 9.
Robert Powell is most recently known for his television role as Mark Williams in Holby City as well as earlier iconic roles such as Jesus Christ in Jesus of Nazareth for Franco Zeffirelli, Richard Hannay in the third film version of The Thirty-Nine Steps and David Briggs alongside his friend Jasper Carrott in The Detectives.
Robert Powell creates theatrical journey through Sussex-lover Rudyard Kipling’s life.
In Just So, Robert uses stories and poems from throughout Kipling’s life to reflect the way in which the writer became one of the great chroniclers and spokesmen of his time. Accompanied by Christine Croshaw on piano and Clive Conway on flute, the play explores the different worlds inhabited by the renowned storyteller and poet through his autobiographical writings and verse.
The evening charts Kipling’s traumatic childhood years, his seven years in India as a journalist honing his writing skills, the early years of married life in Vermont, his time as a war correspondent in South Africa before the final years when he settled in Sussex and explored English history.
Just So will conclude by revealing Kipling’s fascination with England’s heritage, which he illuminated with poems and verse inspired by events from Roman times onwards. It will be paralleled with his increasing concern over the fragility of the English way of life and his idea that a form of Armageddon was approaching the country. His fear was ultimately realised at the outbreak of the First World War after which Kipling worked extensively with the Imperial War Graves Commission.
Just So
Connaught Theatre, Union Place, Worthing. BN11 1LG
Sunday February 9 7pm
Tickets: £14.50, concessions £2 off
Box office: 01903 206 206 or online at www.worthingtheatres.co.uk