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What the press have said: “Hugh Lupton is a teller of great intensity and subtle power.” Sing Out Magazine. U.S. “Hugh Lupton excels in stories of love, passion and emotion…one was wrapt and transported” Folk Roots. “For me the climax was Hugh Lupton’s masterly rendering of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, in which he seemed to become possessed by the story. It was more intonation than recitation and swept away all bad memories of A level set texts.” The Times Educational Supplement “Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden…kept a packed house hanging on their words at one of the longest events at this years Hay Festival…There’s a poetic quality about the carefully modulated prose that explores man’s - and woman’s - frailties and strengths…the escape from the Cyclop’s cave evokes a racy thriller and the descriptions…become sheer poetry.” The Western Mail reviewing the Odyssey. “Hugh Lupton’s storytelling art is sheer wizardry in the guise of utter simplicity…a packed house sat in a thrall of enchantment, no movement, no intrusive sounds…he is joined by singer/fiddler Chris Wood, whose style is timeless and beguiling, his songs wonderfully evocative.” Eastern Daily Press reviewing Psalms from the Horses Mouth. “The Three Snake Leaves is a wonderful, intricate piece about storytelling and the possibilities of redemption.” The Independent. “…the Company of Storytellers have spearheaded the revival of storytelling in this country, helping to transform it from a moribund anachronism to a vigorous and contemporary form of entertainment.” The Independent. “The Company of Storytellers held a Purcell Room audience spellbound for two hours with their bold and absorbing new work ‘I Become Part of It’…The stories - dwelling on the perennial themes of hunger, love, renewal, transformation, sex and death - overlapped and complimented each other, seeming in the end to all be part of one story.” The Times Educational Supplement. “A meticulous gathering…Lupton breathes life into stories of clever, crafty and wise birds.” Sunday Telegraph (reviewing ‘The Songs of Birds”). “Lucid and haunting - a book to treasure.” The Independent (reviewing ‘Tales of Wisdom and Wonder’). “…richness of language filled with the rhythms and cadences of the spoken word….An elegant collection from a master storyteller.” Junior Education (reviewing “Tales of Wisdom and Wonder”). “…the pure clarity of the oral style makes them very powerful indeed.” Books for Keeps (reviewing ‘Freaky Tales’). “Hugh Lupton possesses the art of putting you in touch with parts of your inner remebrances which may have been dormant for a long time.” Storylines (reviewing ‘A Norfolk Songline’). “If there’s one thing we associate with the Iliad, it’s Homer. Probably old, bearded and dressed in a scratchy robe. But had you been in a candle-lit room in Spitalfields on Monday night, you would have found two rather sexy blokes in black V-necks dealing a beautifully enunciated blow to your preconceptions not only about storytelling but about the genesis of the great narrative itself. In a two and a half hour performance Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden took the Iliad back to its roots and into the 21st century…The wedding party which sparks off the siege of Troy becomes an hilarious expose of human vanity and competitiveness, setting the bravado of the mortal male against the cool calculation of the goddess…but where Lupton and Morden really excel is in their remodelling of the famous battle scenes and the men who fight in them…Themes of warmongering, hubris and nationalistic fervour are, of course, particularly pertinent at this time…So, praise be to Morden and Lupton, who made the gods live in a project that is serious, moving and vital.” The Times, October 2001. At the funeral of Jenny Wing, Lupton listened to the vicar struggling to find something to say of the 104 year old woman who had been brought up on a farm in South Cambridgeshire .... as the vicar stumbled the stories she had once told him came swimming into his head. In this 'funeral oration that never happened', folksong frames the stories that weave a whole life around you, bringing the hard world of the 19th century farm back to life. You hear the voice of Jenny's father "husky with the early morning", on the day that the horses were stolen..... You hear the horseman "speaking more in song than words" as he calls them, the "sweet high whistle" that turned the working team on the plough, the "secret trill that urged the geldings on, with loaded wagons up Royston Hill". You feel the warm rubbly breath, the hard curve of the nosebone, smell the must of the stables an, as you journey deeper into the world of imagination, the tears that no-one was there to shed start slowly to well up inside you and spill. The Times. July 2002. Our favourite event so far (at the Edinburgh Festival) has been the rendering of 'Metamorphoses' by master storytellers Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden. The tale of Echo and Narcissus stopped all our hearts, however hardened by age. The Guardian, August 2003 ...The result is a spellbinding performance which ebbs and flows between the two voices of the storytellers, capturing with equal success the enormous emotional highs and the tiny domestic details which, combined, make the original so gripping. Julia Eccleshare reviewing the Iliad in the Guardian, December 2003 “…Lupton, accompanied only by a few, sparsely used musical instruments, summoned the poem back to a bloody and ferocious life….. from the very first moment he began to speak he was utterly convincing… it was a careful and measured performance… a vigorous language that was at times playful and at times like repeated blows of a hammer. There can have been few more rewarding ways of spending yesterday evening in the West Midlands – or perhaps in the whole country – than in Lupton’s company” Birmingham Words, reviewing Beowulf. January 2005. “… I went to the Barbican the other day to listen to two of Britain’s finest storytellers – Hugh Lupton and Daniel Morden – recounting the Iliad, the tale of that great quarrel from which all western literature springs. The seats were uncomfortable… but the hours flew by. These two men had to do no more than tap into the ancient power of the spoken word to hold an entire audience in their thrall. A veil of typescript fell from my eyes. I saw Helen in all her intoxicating beauty standing amid the bloody chunks of a slaughtered stallion. I saw Achilles aglitter in gold armour before his black ranks of Myrmidons. I saw banquets and voyages, armies and oceans, battling heroes and ravening gods – all conjured out of thin air by a voice. Film is often thought to be a threat to literature. But the images that billowed and faded in that darkened auditorium were quite different from those that unspool across a screen. I could put my hands in front of my face and the pictures would not vanish. They were inside me. They belonged to me. They were part of the history of the whole of human life.” Rachel Campbell Johnson, The Times, March 2005. “…his second Hugh Lupton collaboration is ‘One in a Million’…. The very modern parable Wood gradually unveils with patent relish is worthy of Richard Thompson, so vivid the characters and so cinematic the narrative. An epic that runs for nearly ten minutes, it must surely be in the frame for song of the year.” Folk Roots reviewing Chris Wood’s CD ‘The Lark Descending’ June 2005.
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