The fine acoustic of the Barn Theatre, and its intimate architectural ambiance, was the perfect venue for this representation, where Jamie Glover portrayed the poet Rupert Brooke and Lucinda Curtis spoke as a friend narrating.

Marcus Andrews (pianist) performed short interludes between sequences; Jane McCulloch had devised and directed.

The intensity of Brooke's emotions was made evident, as were key factors in his journey through life. The advent of his time spent in Cambridge studying from 1906 was very important, especially his taking part in Dr Faustus in 1907, and subsequent move to The Orchards at Grantchester. The woman whose being was present throughout his life, although they had a bumpy relationship and parted was Ka (Katherine Cox), and even in his dying moments she was in his thoughts as he acknowledged her to have been "the best thing in my life".

In 1911, Brooke reached a crisis point, and when his friend Harry Lamb became involved with Ka, Brooke was hysterically jealous and suffered a breakdown. He returned home and embarked on more poetry writing.

Next Brooke went abroad but missed England and returned by 1914, when preparations for war were under way. He was off to France by October, but returned to London in 1915, with his lip badly swollen and contaminated. Infection then spread to other parts, resulting in his death in April.

Significant poems were read at strategic moments. This was a very well planned enactment which threw light on to Brooke's emotional turmoil and pin-pointed the times of some of his most important writings.

Jill Hopkins