Mikron is like a child’s dream of a theatre company: light-footed, quick-witted, free-wheeling. The tiny band of musician-actors, under the artistic directorship of Marianne McNamara, has its headquarters in a richly decorated narrowboat, with dressing-room space and dorms packed together like a piece of origami. Each summer they travel down English canals stopping at allotments, lifeboat stations or village halls to drop off new plays.
This year, Poppy Hollman’s Common Ground, about the right to roam, is paired with Lindsay Rodden’s musical celebrating Jennie Lee. A driving force behind the Open University, so well appreciated as minister for the arts in Harold Wilson’s government that audiences stood up when she went to the theatre, Lee was earlier this year glimpsed at the National in her subsidiary role as Aneurin Bevan’s wife in Tim Price’s Nye. McNamara’s production, which I watched from a deckchair in a pub garden, puts her centre stage. Sharply and with brio.
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