DESTINY, not deity, shaped the thoughts and actions of Mytholmroyd's most famous son, Ted Hughes.
A fascination with the stars, astrology and the brooding Calderdale landscape steered his course to fame as poet laureate and infamy as the husband a
nd lover of two women who committed suicide.
In Aelish Michael's wistful play Dreaming of Foxes, Hughes (played by Robert Garrett) is visited at his Devon home in later life by an old schoolfriend and states that his life has been "one long Greek tragedy".
The schoolfriend, recently redundant sewing shop worker and grandad Douglas Greenwood (John Laing) has a talent for painting, a hobby as opposed to Hughes's lifetime of toil as a wordsmith.
But which man has enjoyed the most fulfilling life? Hughes, poet to the royal family, who has travelled the globe and speaks regularly on the phone to his daughter? Or Greenwood, picked on by their playmates as a child, who had never been south of Birmingham until invited to Hughes's home, but has an allotment and daily visits from his family?
United again by their love of fishing, they remember their days as the Banksfield gang in Mytholmroyd. Calder High students Joe Cotton (Teddy), Joseph Moorhead (Dougie), Kieran Bell (Ronnie), Juliette Strobel (Olwyn) and college students James Patrick (Ted's elder brother Gerald) and Jenny Birch (Irene) give convincing performances in this premiere staged as part of the Ted Hughes Festival.
The full article contains 251 words and appears in Evening Courier newspaper.
