A bit of an oddity this week. The pint and the pie as per usual, but less a play and more a kind of dramatic lecture.
Written and performed by Giles Croft, this is the story of Javez Wolffe, to whom Croft was distantly related. In the early part of the twentieth century Wolffe achieved fame as the man who made many attempts to swim the English Channel, but never quite made it. Although he did later achieve some vicarious success in the challenge as a coach.
Croft fills us in on the trials and tribulations of the Javez career, which includes some amazing successes alongside his more prominent failures. He's a fascinating subject, and there are a few laughs along the way.
But some efforts to make the performance more 'interesting' only served to detract. The frequent switching between microphone and natural voice was an unnecessary distraction, and what exactly was the point of demonstrating what a poor guitarist he is? Croft is an entertaining, if a touch smug, narrator and shouldn't need such cheap devices.
No, not a play in the usual sense, but there's enough entertainment and drama to justify it's place in the series.
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