IT'S fitting to round off a raft of celebrations in Worcester to mark Sir Edward Elgar's 150th anniversary with the premiere of a play focusing on the composer's marriage.

Peter Sutton, who lives near the church where the Elgars are buried, was asked to write Elgar and Alice by Catherine Moody and Edward Hardwicke whose fathers, Victor Moody and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, both knew Elgar.

How did a fanatical cyclist, amateur chemist, incorrigible joker and son of a piano tuner marry the daughter of a major-general and how did they cope with the tensions between his music and her ambitions to be a writer?

Those are just two of the questions Sutton attempts to answer in this Worcester Swan Theatre production, along with providing a suggested solution to the true enigma behind the Enigma Variations and looking at how Elgar's need for other muses created resentment in Alice.

The first half concentrates rather unsatisfactorily on Elgar's relationship with MP's wife Alice Stuart Wortley, though the second, basically a two-hander between Gerald Harper's composer and Janet Hargreaves' Lady Alice has a bit more to get your teeth into.

I had imagined Elgar to be many things, but never the bumbling, blusterer that is initially portrayed here. The second half reveals more depths to the music maker, who seems to have lost his musical inspiration, and Gerald Harper's acting is of the finest quality.

I came away feeling that I'd been brought closer to the real Edward Elgar in Worcester Cathedral, surrounded by his music, than by this production.

There will be two performances of Elgar and Alice at Hereford's Courtyard on June 22 and 23. The first is a fundraising gala in aid of St Michael's Hospice.

JK