Stars explained: * A production of no real merit with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic which lifts theatre to another plane.
Half stars fall between the ratings

Making light work of work

Summer Show 2012!

Moorpool Players

Moorpool Hall, Harborne

***

PEOPLE who find the daily grind hard to take tend to describe work as a four-letter word. And if they are locked in a tedious job its easy to understand them.

So it was a brave decision of the players to select work as the theme of this year's summer show, and they went to the trouble of advising potential customers not to be put off by the subject.

 Director Debbie Scattergood has written a series of amusing sketches showing men and women at work, on computers in offices, waiting tables in a cafe, bubbly beauticians, and lads on a building site discussing how the wife of one had managed to find multiple ways of making egg sandwiches. Even redundancies crop up.

 Members of the 13-strong cast open with the song Nine to Five, then John Healey acted as an extremely patient official addressing not-so-bright job applicants whose comical CVs included such achievements as 'growing a beard' and doing a spot of ironing in a charity shop.

John appears to be addressing members of the audience when discussing the lack of useful content in the CVs, and the first nighters clearly found his piece very funny. Maybe they had experienced something similar in real life.

 Even if one or two sketches fall a little flat, the enthusiasm of the actors certainly rubs off on the audience.

Where the show really scores high marks is in the second act when music takes a much bigger and very welcome part in the proceedings. It underlined that more music would have given the production greater impact.

 Laura King and Dan Birch combine in a lovely duet, Something Stupid, and Mark Scattergood put plenty of passion into Till I Hear You Sing.

And there is a big finish with the entire cast joining in Brotherhood of Man.

 Good contributions, too, from Caz Alderton, Samantha Bloxham, Charlotte Chapman, Trisha Martin, Andrew Miles, Melissa Millard, Marguerite Morris, Debbie Scattergood and Emma Suffield.

Clearly a great deal of hard work has gone into staging this home made production.  To: 07.07.12.

Paul Marston 

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