Mrs Popplewell’s Garden is this year’s gentle and humorous performance from the Rude Mechanicals Theatre Company, who return to Thedden Grange for one night only, Thursday July 27.
Click here to book your tickets. Bring your own low-backed garden chairs; gates open at 6pm so come early and bring a picnic!
Here’s a synopsis of the play:
It’s April 1940 and The Willows School for Girls, including Jocasta, Daphne and Dotty, will have to move lock, stock and the proverbial barrel from its idyllic home in Little Inkling, Sussex, to Buckinghamshire, where they will take refuge from the war. Lessons are suspended and they have two weeks left to have some fun and say goodbye to their friends.
It’s a disaster for Daphne. All she wants is to be kissed before she’s seventeen, but now she’s got to move away, she may never see Gerald again! Jocasta’s opinion is it’s actually an ‘opportunity in abundance’ because they can make one last raid on the old witch Miss Popplewell’s strawberry patch and, as Gerald lives next door to Apple Tree Cottage, Daphne may see him. He’s always watering his hollyhocks.
But an intruder gets in first, tramples all over Miss Popplewell’s borders, stamps his muddy boots all over her scullery floor, skulks into her larder and helps himself to a plate of scones! Still warm, they were!
Who is the intruder? Is it the gypsies, a burglar, a foreign agent, even an escaped convict? The entire village goes into a panic. They’re not safe in their beds! But they’re British! They must stick together. Rise to the occasion.
In the meantime, will the girls get the strawberries? Will their kindly headmistress, Miss Tricklebank, confine them to their dorms? Will Daphne be kissed before she’s seventeen? You’ll have to come to find out. A comedy of manners, woven with poignancy and gently unearthing buried things from Miss Popplewell’s past.
