Little could Patrington’s tireless singer and balladeer, Kevin Young, have imagined 20 months ago what a mammoth task he was undertaking adapting the very rare book he had chanced on – The Strange Story of Sarah Kelly – for the stage.
And that stage last Friday evening was the chancel of a pleasantly filled Church of St Lawrence, Elstronwick.
Despite this listed building’s remote position at the end of a long lane in the middle of East Yorkshire farmland, an appreciative audience heard not only Kevin’s sonorous solos, but also those of a totally focused Lesley Curtis and Anne Rees, along with Paul Pike’s sensitive accompaniment on the keyboard and so many other instrumentalists.
Somehow, Kevin managed a gigantic juggling act, drawing together a diverse band of musicians, pipers, ballerinas and projectionists. And how moved was the audience when two very strong narrators, John Rees and Nancy Young, began to tell Sarah’s story: her early years in Broadstairs, followed by seduction, abduction, domestic violence, destitution, prostitution, double bereavement, legal battles, then rich inheritance.
And although it would be unfair to highlight performances – they were all excellent – a gripping evening benefited from the immense and utterly charming input of two winsome and entirely authentic dancers: Kennedie and Harleigh.
And when Sarah’s second husband died, Sarah controversially managed, micro-managed, all his Irish estates, harshly, unkindly, at a time Irish folk were dreadfully hungry and oppressed. Maybe some of her aggrieved tenants were behind Sarah’s violent, untimely and inescapable death.
Yet no way does Kevin Young or his compatriots relate this tale mawkishly – or clumsily.
Thus, it is that Sarah: Life Turned her that Way is now, deservedly, all set to go to Withernsea Methodist Church in the new year, then to Hull… then, perhaps, to Ireland!
Godfrey Holmes, Withernsea.
