... The Merchant BIRMINGHAM REP Premiere INITIALLY Arnold Wesker's play seems as dense with ideas and themes as a blackberry thicket. The running sore of racial prejudice staining the centuries, the struggle of woman to be valued as a whole person not just ...

... suggests those who make the war get on with it and leave him alone. His schoolboy friends play at soldiers and romp around the blackberry bushes, at first aware that something nasty has taken place and then becoming used to it. Clods like Willie Watson become ...

... the aloofness of Helen Anderson as Kathy, brushing a tear behind her diehard exterior of wandering through meals of wild blackberries, and the gullibility of Maureen Glackin's Ailish make this a play to remember. Triche Kehoe is responsible for the tree ...

... Blackberries Richmond When the Orange Tree goes dark what will happen to The Room? Just across the road from the main house, this space was the cradle of Sam Walters' theatre company. Lately, as a lunchtime venue, it has given opportunities for trainee ...