The Life and Times of Mitchell & Kenyon – The Dukes, Lancaster

Gareth Cassidy and Christopher Wright in The Life and Times of Mitchell & Kenyon at The Dukes, Lancaster, before playing the Oldham Coliseum. Picture: Joel Fildes

The Life and Times of Mitchell & Kenyon continues at The Dukes, Lancaster until 10 May, before playing at Oldham Coliseum (15–31 May).

“The unrecorded life is not worth living,” claims Sagar Mitchell, as his pioneering film-making partnership with James Kenyon slides into permanent decline.

The fact that in reality he probably said nothing of the kind should not detract from the retrospective potency of the remark – or the unique part the two men’s relatively short-lived line of work played in capturing an era for future generations to peer at forever more.

At their peak the unlikely business partnership between the opportunistic young cabinet maker (Mitchell) and the more worldly-wise failing penny slot vendor (Kenyon) were churning out hundreds of ‘local films for local people’ – all from relatively humble headquarters in Blackburn, Lancashire, then the industrial heartland of late Victorian and early Edwardian England.

It’s difficult for techno-savvy modern audiences to fully appreciate the awe and wonder felt by the subjects of Mitchell & Kenyon’s work – captured on film at work and play and then seen for the first time hours later in theatres, fairgrounds and community halls as flickering moving images.

But then as now the passage of time is frequently cruel. What one day is cutting edge, the next day is old hat. So it was with the works of Mitchell & Kenyon. The novelty of seeing oneself on a screen soon wore off as bigger scale ‘movies’ took over. Factory gate films were replaced by escapism and much of the pioneers’ legacy was largely forgotten until accidentally rediscovered by workmen in 1994, sealed in metal churns, and handed by film buff Peter Worden to the British Film Institute. Together with the University of Sheffield’s National Fairground Archive, the BFI lovingly restored and researched more than 800 of them.

What were originally seen as temporary amusements now form a unique insight into a lost era. But other than specialist film nights and Professor Vanessa Toulmin’s book about the collection titled Electric Edwardians, that seemed to be it.

Enter Lancaster-based award winning playwright and screenwriter Daragh Carville who has set out to honour the memory of Mitchell & Kenyon in much the same way that he imagines the film-makers were out to honour the subjects of their work and lift them out of their daily drudgery.

His main problem is that it is the pictures that tell the story and far more is known about the films than the men behind them. To that end, when in doubt, the gaps are filled in with a song and dance. Carville and locally based director Amy Leach combine narrative and story with a music hall approach.

Dukes regular John Biddle’s original singalong music keeps the pace and humour up, though the contemporary moments are a little too scholarly.

Where the production does triumph is by augmenting the live action with the video and lighting expertise of Leeds and Lancaster’s imitating the dog theatre company, projecting Mitchell & Kenyon’s creations onto every available backdrop, adding an essential dimension to the otherwise none too substantial storyline.

As so often with The Dukes, the cast is called to multi-task. Gareth Cassidy and Christopher Wright make the most of the contrasting pioneering showmen, at times more like a comedy and vocal double act than the important visionaries they accidentally turned out to be. Liam Gerrard, Jo Mousley and David Westbook complete the hardworking company.

Robin Duke

www.dukes-lancaster.org/theatre/the-life-and-times-mitchell-kenyon

To watch examples of Mitchell & Kenyon’s work – click here