Burnt norton house theatre

We need help. Her mother dropped the decanter. It shattered, spreading its amber contents across the floor. Everything will be fine, I promise you. Get Pike to harness the cart and bring the water butts. I will ride on first, but you must stay with Dorothy. Thomas and Dorothy galloped along the track towards Norton. At the end of the drive, they jumped down. With little encouragement the horses galloped back towards Hidcote. They were barely through the garden door before a suffocating heat hit them like a wall, burning their throats and stinging their eyes.

Estate workers, servants, men and women formed a chain of black silhouettes against the red sky, passing buckets of water from hand to hand, but it was too late. The magnificent new mansion had blossomed into an inferno. Flames leapt through the roof, and one by one the windows shattered and the columns crashed to the ground. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

Argos AO. Privacy Policy Feedback. Burnt Norton today. Today the house is a light, large, welcoming and with several drawing rooms. Share or comment on this article: Burnt Norton: The Cotswold house immortalised in a T S Eliot poem in , is set to become famous again in a new novel based on its stranger-than-fiction history e-mail.

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My information will not be shared with any third party see our Privacy Statement - opens in a new window. Fiennes has a fine speaking voice, every word is apparent, the ends of sentences are never dropped and his vocal projection reached out easily to a large audience. Some may have been there to see in person the evil magician from the Harry Potter franchise, and found Eliot for the first time. Hopefully, there were others, like myself, who really longed to hear a fine actor reading "The Four Quartets" within the long tradition of British theatre, where great actors like Macready, Sir Henry Irving or Emlyn Williams gave concert performances of adaptable authors.

Fiennes did this moving swiftly through complex verse structure, or sometimes standing and fixing us with his eyes as the gravity of the verse thundered Eliot's message of man's hopeless compulsion to destroy what he could never re-create. It was overwhelmingly fine. A visit to a performance such as this is biographical. Who are you, what have you done in your time, will Eliot through the medium of Fiennes tell you who being you is at this moment?. The men wore black dinner jackets, Moorehead wore couture.

Times change, Fiennes wore a totally unremarkable jacket and trousers and was barefoot which,in its way was perfect and provided no distraction from Eliot's marvellous language. The set was a pair of huge dark screens which revolved on a central spindle, reminding this reviewer of similar revolving screens once designed by Inigo Jones for the luxurious court masques of Charles the First.

Exciting to see another continuation on this rewarding evening of an ancient theatrical scenic device. I regret the different cuts.

But a night of marvels and magic nevertheless and wherever he is, I am sure T. Eliot would have found Ralph Fiennes totally admirable. Find out more or adjust your settings. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings. He engages us, the often house-lit audience, rather than ostracising us by taking the stance of elevated actor. To stay on track with him for over 80 minutes of seamless text even the artful silences require contemplative attention is a joy, not a challenge; Fiennes has created an outstanding, uniquely beautiful live theatre experience that resonates deeply long after he leaves the stage.

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