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Canteen serves up a feast of fun
Dinnerladies -
Second Helpings Grand
Theatre, Wolverhampton ****
TAKING a successful TV series,
happy and contented in its box in the corner,
and giving it the free run of the wide world of the theatre has always
been fraught with danger. With
the original cast, or at least most of them, as a sort of sitcom
world tour – Hello Birmingham!!
and all that - there is the appeal of seeing the stars
in the flesh – that ‘he's not as tall as he is on telly' moment. Often seeing the characters
before your very eyes and comparing their height, girth, legs and other attributes
to how they appear on TV, along with a liberal scattering of
catchphrases and familiar scenes and props
is enough to get by. Once the cast is more ‘Who
he?' and “Who she?' though, familiarity, or
more accurately, lack of it does tend to breed contempt and the whole
thing is in danger of becoming a tribute act. So all credit to the cast of
Dinnerladies for managing to avoid the Stars
in Their Eyes karaoke end of the market. Only the excellent Andrew Dunn
as Tony the canteen manager and Sue Devaney, who appeared briefly as her
TV character Jane, came from the TV series and Jane soon vanished with
Devaney changing to the role of Petula, Bren's hard drinking, hard
living, hard exaggerating mother who was played by Julie Walters
in the BBC series – a role Devany managed with aplomb – no doubt
remembering some tips from dear old Larry in the distant past. The rest you took at face
value and to their credit they managed the mannerisms and accents of the
characters they played without making it look like you have wandered
into a lost episode of Dead Ringers.
Laura Sheppard, for example,
was Bren. Not Laura Sheppard playing
Victoria Wood playing Bren – she was Bren so much so you stopped
thinking how much like Wood she was and just accepted it was Bren
working in the canteen of some Northern factory in the suburbs of
Manchester somewhere near Mobberly The same went for Barrie
Palmers as handyman Stan, and the canteen staff Gay Almbert as Dolly,
Margaret Preece as Jean, Emily Houghton as Twink, Krupa Pattani as Anita
and Rebecca Wingaye as HR's Philippa. You were watching a play called Dinnerladies and not a bunch of people doing impressions of people who did some sitcom called Dinnerladies on TV. The series had its own
developing storyline and that is condensed into eight scenes of the
play, with all eight set in the canteen. We see the growing relationship
between Tony and Bren with Tony wanting a new life with a B&B in
Scotland, Bren's mum on her last, wobbly legs and, perhaps prophetic,
the impending closure of the canteen as a cost saving measure. The original TV series
survived not on belly laughs or elaborate stunts but on a witty script
and the sort of trivia we all know so well that binds the lives, at
least while getting paid, of people who work together. The endless
wittering about what was on TV, who was in what film or coming in
halfway through conversations with the wrong end of the stick – how else
would you confuse cervixes and motorway service stations. There are the insights that
only come from real life, like Twink's proof
of the power of education in her knowing that you don't get your tongue
pierced because it hurts when you say sausages. Or Stan's view that novelty
condoms are not up to the job – and he should know . . . his dad was a
desert rat. There is a matter of factness
about the basics as well when Jean reveals that the earth did not move
in her sex life with her ex Keith adding that even the headboard didn't
move. The gentle humour and slowly drifting story has translated to the stage well and the cast have turned it into an enjoyable, stand alone evening so much so that even anyone who had never seen an episode or even heard of Dinner Ladies would not come away baffled or disappointed - just contented after a good comedy and an evening at the theatre. Roger
Clarke And for
dessert . . . *** THEY'RE back, with
another healthy diet of humour and pathos from the dinner ladies who
proved such a major hit with the armchair viewers during the BBC TV
sitcom's successful run. The latest stage version is
delivered as a second helping by a slick cast, some of whom appeared in
the previous UK tour, and the story, or stories, are just the quality
you would expect from Victoria Wood. Laura Sheppard, playing
Bren, top lady in the fictional components works canteen, looks and
sounds like Victoria and even has the same mannerisms, while Andrew
Dunn, again brings his special quality to the part of Tony, the man in
charge. Dunn starred in the same role
during the TV series, and he is clearly at home coping with the
remarkable mixture characters and their problems. Also from the telly show, Sue
Devaney is a hoot as sex mad, flatulence troubled Petula, though it
strains the imagination to believe she is Bren's mum. In the female dominated tale,
Barrie Palmer - a face as cheerful as the economy - excels as caretaker
Stan, and there are sound performances from Emily Houghton (Twink) and
Krupa Pattani (Anita). Directed by David Graham,
Dinner Ladies continues to serve up the laughter until Saturday night
02-03-11. Paul Marston
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