The Full English
Written and Performed by Melanie Branton
Barons Court Theatre
Star rating 2.5
This account of the development of the English Language is an animated lecture rather than a piece of theatre. Melanie Branton, a lively and clever poet, takes the audience on a whistle-stop tour which starts with the Celts and ends with Covid.
She’s a former English teacher and would, I think, have been inspirationally enthusiastic in the classroom but sadly her acting skills are not great. For nearly two hours we listen to her speaking too fast, often stumbling over words, nodding her head forcefully and same-ily sawing the air for emphasis. And it wears pretty thin.
The poems she incorporates are fun, though, from the opener in which she uses as many of her favourite words as she can through to the final one which works in many words and phrases which have come into common usage in the last ten years. There’s a poem rooted in Covid, making the point that some of the vocabulary has already been and gone. Remember when we were all talking about “lateral flow”? American English, she contends, was deliberately steered to be different from British English and treats us to an illustrative poem. Along the way we also get Robert Lowth who wrote the first prescriptive grammar book and William Caxton, on whom Branton tells us she has a crush, because he established the first English printing press with moveable type.
Well, I’m a former English teacher too and I used to teach a lot of this stuff so as far as I was concerned most of it it was pretty familiar territory. I didn’t know, however, that the Chinese invented printing in the 9th century and had moveable type by the 11th so they were well ahead. Moreover the Muslims had highly developed knowledge of science and mathematics which is why most of the vocabulary (zero, algebra etc) is derived form Arabic. We are also lectured about the great vowel shift, the shame of colonialism and told that the Normans were men of the North (that is Vikings) rather than French – among many other things at high speed.
I was surprised, though that Branton barely mentions Shakespeare and ignores the King James Bible, both of which had a major effect on the evolution of the English language. So, in recent years, has immigration and that doesn’t feature in this show either. Wherever people come from they bring words which find their way into the melting pot of English.
It’s mildly entertaining and faultlessly informative but I’d hesitate to call it theatre. It is, however, a commendably original idea. The childish audience participation (shouting out when she puts on a Viking Helmet, having to answer questions and more) makes it feel like Horrible Histories spliced with pantomime and did nothing for me.
Photo credit: Lidia Crisafulli
