Oh joy! It was a delight to sit and watch “Killing Time”, directed and produced by Ian Dickens, at The Grand last evening. It's a good yarn and was well acted by Huw Higginson and Hannah Waterman. It must be a challenge to take part in a two-hander, maintaining realistic dialogue and retaining the interest of the audience, but the tension between the two characters was sustained, helped by a good script from Richard Stockwell.
The story is set in the living room of comfortable middle class house. Jane has just given Rick a lift home, to thank him for coming to her rescue at the supermarket check-out. She found herself without her purse and he gallantly came to her rescue, paying for the shopping. She accepts the offer of a gin and tonic and reveals that, despite being financially well off, her marriage is not happy. Rick is a bit more reticent about revealing his background, but as the play progresses we learn that neither is quite as they first appear. As the balance of power shifts from one to the other and our sympathies waver, the story gets darker.
As I entered into the story as an ordinary member of the audience the am dram critic sitting like a parrot on my shoulder was taking notes. So much is down to body language, inuendo, looks exchanged or witheld, tone of voice. Learning and delivering lines is only the first step. This was no comedy, but good lines raised laughs on several occasions.
Well done all and I hope Ian Dickens Productions is back next year.
Dorothy
Thursday 23 July 2009
Wednesday 22 July 2009
Comedy con
The theatre is a place of darkness and light, a cocoon, where stories are woven and spells created. The audience settle down in comfy seats and wait to be entertained. They will happily suspend belief, accepting that the crook they see in TV's soap is , just for now, a handsome young squire, that someone on stage is capable of committing murder, that the attractive young woman with innocence in every word and gesture has wicked intentions. So it feels like a con, a betrayal, when we are asked to accept something that does not ring true. I can “ooh” and “ahh” with the best of them as Peter Pan flies across the stage but cringe when four ordinary women decide, at the suggestion of a newly arrived neighbour, that the solution to being a bit hard up is to become prostitutes for a week.
This was the premise of “The Tart and the Vicar's Wife” by Joan Shirley at The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton last week. It was billed as a comedy and early scenes looked promising; it could develop as a comedy or even be pushed to farce. Instead, it followed an unreal story line, veered into serious drama, threw in a love story and ended “happily ever after”.
The set up is that a bright young, successful couple find their lives turned around when the husband decides to become a vicar as a result of deliverance from a serious car accident. They sell off their possessions and their house to fund his training and here he is in his first parish, with his wife regretting the loss of the high life she previously enjoyed. Her only source of income is writing risquee stories for lads' magazines, much to her husbands disgust.
Enter the new neighbour, a likely lad, former lorry driver and lottery winner. He bought the local manor at a bargain price, before moving in and discovering that it has a resident ghost. He asks the vicar to exorcise it, but the newly ordained vicar has no experience of such matters and in any case is about to go off for a month's training.
Enter the remaining characters, an American back-packing student en-route to Europe, an attractive middle aged divorcee who has an antique shop, and the farmers wife and mother of five.
Off goes the vicar, in comes the curate, the fun figure, to ask the ladies to organise some fund raising activities for the imminent church fete. Now, forgive me for being pedantic, but I doubt that vicars get sent off for four week training sessions by the C of E these days and any village lady worth her salt would have the fete planning sown up months before the event.
In comes the neighbour, Joe, driven out by Moaning Minnie, and after listening to the moans of the ladies about the shortage of cash, suggests they use the vicar's absence to turn the house into a high class brothel for some American businessmen who are nearby at a conference and looking to spend their expenses allowance before heading home, up to £5,000 each!
This is where I and the author part company. It was also where one of our party decided to sit out the second half in the theatre lobby. I was left with a nasty taste in the mouth and fuming. By next morning I was reworking the story, so here goes:
The ladies challenge Joe, to stop being a wimp and running over every time he sees the ghost (which occurs with dreary regulatory) and let them use the old manor to make money from tempting the American businessmen to “stay a night at the haunted house”. Each of the ladies can use their talents (writing, cooking for the hordes, antiques etc) and a proportion will go to the church funds. Meanwhile, Joe, scared witless, can move into the vicar's house to keep an eye on things.
There is plenty of scope for village misunderstandings as to what is going on at the manor, and for cases of mistaken identity with Joe standing in for the vicar. The student's Dad could even turn out to be one of the visiting Americans. At the end of the week the vicar returns and all is returned to normal, with Joe coming to an understanding with Moaning Minnie and the ladies in profit.
Now, that is a story I can live with and leave the theatre smiling.
This was the premise of “The Tart and the Vicar's Wife” by Joan Shirley at The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton last week. It was billed as a comedy and early scenes looked promising; it could develop as a comedy or even be pushed to farce. Instead, it followed an unreal story line, veered into serious drama, threw in a love story and ended “happily ever after”.
The set up is that a bright young, successful couple find their lives turned around when the husband decides to become a vicar as a result of deliverance from a serious car accident. They sell off their possessions and their house to fund his training and here he is in his first parish, with his wife regretting the loss of the high life she previously enjoyed. Her only source of income is writing risquee stories for lads' magazines, much to her husbands disgust.
Enter the new neighbour, a likely lad, former lorry driver and lottery winner. He bought the local manor at a bargain price, before moving in and discovering that it has a resident ghost. He asks the vicar to exorcise it, but the newly ordained vicar has no experience of such matters and in any case is about to go off for a month's training.
Enter the remaining characters, an American back-packing student en-route to Europe, an attractive middle aged divorcee who has an antique shop, and the farmers wife and mother of five.
Off goes the vicar, in comes the curate, the fun figure, to ask the ladies to organise some fund raising activities for the imminent church fete. Now, forgive me for being pedantic, but I doubt that vicars get sent off for four week training sessions by the C of E these days and any village lady worth her salt would have the fete planning sown up months before the event.
In comes the neighbour, Joe, driven out by Moaning Minnie, and after listening to the moans of the ladies about the shortage of cash, suggests they use the vicar's absence to turn the house into a high class brothel for some American businessmen who are nearby at a conference and looking to spend their expenses allowance before heading home, up to £5,000 each!
This is where I and the author part company. It was also where one of our party decided to sit out the second half in the theatre lobby. I was left with a nasty taste in the mouth and fuming. By next morning I was reworking the story, so here goes:
The ladies challenge Joe, to stop being a wimp and running over every time he sees the ghost (which occurs with dreary regulatory) and let them use the old manor to make money from tempting the American businessmen to “stay a night at the haunted house”. Each of the ladies can use their talents (writing, cooking for the hordes, antiques etc) and a proportion will go to the church funds. Meanwhile, Joe, scared witless, can move into the vicar's house to keep an eye on things.
There is plenty of scope for village misunderstandings as to what is going on at the manor, and for cases of mistaken identity with Joe standing in for the vicar. The student's Dad could even turn out to be one of the visiting Americans. At the end of the week the vicar returns and all is returned to normal, with Joe coming to an understanding with Moaning Minnie and the ladies in profit.
Now, that is a story I can live with and leave the theatre smiling.
Friday 17 July 2009
Write me a Murder
The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton is without the usual Charles Vance repetory season this year, but its replacement is a set of three dramas, directed by Ian Dickens. I've booked for all three and report here on the first, a thriller entitled “Write me a Murder”.
It is set in Rodingham Manor, the ancestral home of the impoverished Rodingham family. Brothers Clive, and younger sibling David are there at the request of their dying father. Clive, charming and unprincipled, is planning to sell the old place and use the cash to follow his wealthy American fiancée to the States in a bid to secure a comfortable future. David, after an absence of twenty years, is thinking it is time to move back in. There is little love lost between the brothers and before his Lordship's body is even cold the sparks fly when local boy-made-good, Charles Sturrock comes to make an offer on the house. He does little to hide his contempt of the Rodinghams and is patronising to his wife, a hopeful young writer. With a sale agreed he pushes his young wife into the company of David, a successful author, intimating that he should ghost write a story for her to enter into a national competition.
Act I sets the scene and leads the audience first one way then another ending on an unexpected note and the conclusion of Act II was quite unexpected. I am full of admiration for the author, Frederick Knott, who is probably better known for his play “Dial M for Murder”, in the way he directs the audience into thinking they know what is going to happen, then throwing a googlie.
Leslie Grantham was particularly good as the local businessman with a nasty, bullying streak.
P.S. I notice that Horsham DC and the Capitol are included in the acknowledgments. This was my old stomping ground, back in the days when the Capitol Theatre was a cinema and before it became a Bingo Hall; I hear from contacts still living in Horsham that it is a successful Arts Centre with lots going on.
Tonight we're off to see a comedy - "The Tart and the Vicar's Wife" and next week it is another thriller - "Killing Time".
It is set in Rodingham Manor, the ancestral home of the impoverished Rodingham family. Brothers Clive, and younger sibling David are there at the request of their dying father. Clive, charming and unprincipled, is planning to sell the old place and use the cash to follow his wealthy American fiancée to the States in a bid to secure a comfortable future. David, after an absence of twenty years, is thinking it is time to move back in. There is little love lost between the brothers and before his Lordship's body is even cold the sparks fly when local boy-made-good, Charles Sturrock comes to make an offer on the house. He does little to hide his contempt of the Rodinghams and is patronising to his wife, a hopeful young writer. With a sale agreed he pushes his young wife into the company of David, a successful author, intimating that he should ghost write a story for her to enter into a national competition.
Act I sets the scene and leads the audience first one way then another ending on an unexpected note and the conclusion of Act II was quite unexpected. I am full of admiration for the author, Frederick Knott, who is probably better known for his play “Dial M for Murder”, in the way he directs the audience into thinking they know what is going to happen, then throwing a googlie.
Leslie Grantham was particularly good as the local businessman with a nasty, bullying streak.
P.S. I notice that Horsham DC and the Capitol are included in the acknowledgments. This was my old stomping ground, back in the days when the Capitol Theatre was a cinema and before it became a Bingo Hall; I hear from contacts still living in Horsham that it is a successful Arts Centre with lots going on.
Tonight we're off to see a comedy - "The Tart and the Vicar's Wife" and next week it is another thriller - "Killing Time".
Monday 6 July 2009
July update
July meeting
Sixteen members brought offerings of readings, a quiz and food to Richard A's place for the July meeting. Richard provided an excellent one-act Agatha Christie play, set on a beach and read a P G Wodehouse extract. Liz H's quiz, very local and tuned to the B Players fountain of knowledge, proved harder than expected and Rosemary and Catherine read poetry.
Play cast
Auditions for November's "Time of my Life" were well attended and brought in new members. Inevitably, some people had to be disappointed in not being chosen for some tasty parts, but I am sure they will be busy behind the scenes in a supporting role.
Theatrical activity
Whilst all this was going on, Q and I were walking in the Lake District, but found time to see Alan Ayckbourn's "Chorus of Disapproval" at the lovely Theatre on the Lake in Keswick. It is about a hapless, but likeable young man who turns up at the local operatic society to see if he can join and make new friends. He tends to take the line of least resistance and let others make decisions for him, whcih results in both excitement and very awkward situations. Ultimately he ends as he begins, on his own. A bit sad, really.
They are also doing "Summer Lightning" based on a P G Wodehouse story and I hope to get hold of a script for one of our monthly meetings.
This week David K performs in "Much Ado about Nothing" with BROADS at The Hem and the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton offers three plays over the coming three weeks - two thrillers and a comedy - at a reduced rate of £33.
A group of BPs saw "Arsenic and Old Lace at The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster last month and were very impressed by the Nonentities production. I know that Liz H has a hankering for the BPs to tackle this one day.
Several BP members saw TOTS' "The Lion in Winter" and reported that, despite it being a rather downbeat story about a disfunctional royal family, there was some good acting and a fab set.
Dorothy
Sixteen members brought offerings of readings, a quiz and food to Richard A's place for the July meeting. Richard provided an excellent one-act Agatha Christie play, set on a beach and read a P G Wodehouse extract. Liz H's quiz, very local and tuned to the B Players fountain of knowledge, proved harder than expected and Rosemary and Catherine read poetry.
Play cast
Auditions for November's "Time of my Life" were well attended and brought in new members. Inevitably, some people had to be disappointed in not being chosen for some tasty parts, but I am sure they will be busy behind the scenes in a supporting role.
Theatrical activity
Whilst all this was going on, Q and I were walking in the Lake District, but found time to see Alan Ayckbourn's "Chorus of Disapproval" at the lovely Theatre on the Lake in Keswick. It is about a hapless, but likeable young man who turns up at the local operatic society to see if he can join and make new friends. He tends to take the line of least resistance and let others make decisions for him, whcih results in both excitement and very awkward situations. Ultimately he ends as he begins, on his own. A bit sad, really.
They are also doing "Summer Lightning" based on a P G Wodehouse story and I hope to get hold of a script for one of our monthly meetings.
This week David K performs in "Much Ado about Nothing" with BROADS at The Hem and the Grand Theatre in Wolverhampton offers three plays over the coming three weeks - two thrillers and a comedy - at a reduced rate of £33.
A group of BPs saw "Arsenic and Old Lace at The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster last month and were very impressed by the Nonentities production. I know that Liz H has a hankering for the BPs to tackle this one day.
Several BP members saw TOTS' "The Lion in Winter" and reported that, despite it being a rather downbeat story about a disfunctional royal family, there was some good acting and a fab set.
Dorothy
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