Eve Of War

Trisha Lewis is Nanny Eve in this play written and directed by Peter John Cooper - a play of wit, sadness, melodrama and, sometimes, broad slapstick humour. It is suitable for all ages. When it was first performed in Oxford, The Oxford Mail said it was an “An astonishing piece infused with warmth and Melancholy.”

Little Arthur gazes from his nursery window trying to make sense of the mad world of the grown-ups beyond. It is September 1939, the eve of War and Nanny Cummins wants to keep the truth of the coming horror from Arthur.

“Eve of War - Little Arthur’s History of England” is a one woman show about the life of a Nanny and her charge in the nursery of a big house during the days and nights of September 1939. Nanny Cummins is more than a little eccentric and is definitely larger than life. During the course of the play we gain a sense of Nanny’s past and her attitude to the looming conflict as she reads from the big history book that she keeps on the nursery shelf. From time to time she fortifies herself with a swig from her special medicine bottle. In the end Nanny knows she cannot keep the truth from her little Arthur and, instead, tries to make him understand what it might all mean. In a dramatic climax we come to understand the secret that Nanny herself has kept hidden all these years...