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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. |
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Joan Wall as Thelma, Debbie Donnelly as Felicity, Christine Bland as Minnie and Sheila Parkes as Mrs Reece. Chase me up Farndale Avenue, s’il vous plaît Hall Green Little Theatre ***** As theatrical performances go this is
one that should have gone long ago, the further away the better, it
makes even bad look good. Lines are fumbled, entrances and exits missed,
cues a matter of luck and a plot, yes there is one, a mystery to both
audience and cast. Abysmal would be a compliment. But to be fair, and one must always strive to
find the positives, it is one of the better productions by The Farndale
Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society, or TFAHETGDS
for short, as anyone who has
If the TFAHETGDS can guarantee anything though, it is laughs and in
these troubled times when the prices are higher every time you walk in a
shop and ovens and boilers have become merely expensive ornaments, that
is a priceless commodity.
The cast of five, playing enough characters to make a reasonable stab at
Ben Hur, are gloriously inept and that is the difficult bit. Getting it
all wrong and messing things up is easy, it takes no skill and the worse
the actor the better they usually are at it; the clever trick, though,
is getting it all wrong intentionally yet making it look like an
unfolding disaster – getting it wrong, right or is it getting it right,
wrong?
Whatever! Just making it look wrong demands spot on timing and lots of
discipline and the quintet never faltered, well obviously they did, but
only when they were supposed to. So, back to the play, s’il vous plait, and the
society have landed in France, gay Paris to be exact, with a sort of
farce involving Messrs Parrot, Barrett and Carrot, a secretary,
mistresses, various wives, real and pretend, a maid, an errant vacuum
cleaner and a rendition of
La Marseillaise which, in retaliation, could explain why it is
so difficult to travel to France these days. It is all introduced by the society chairwoman, Mrs Phoebe Reece in a splendid, it’ll be all right on the night, performance from Sheila Parkes. Then there is Thelma, played with a sort of bolshy attitude by Joan Wall. She is . . . Lord only knows.
Thelma with her gift of expensive perfume from her lover, a perfume which has a suspicious look of a bottle of milk on the turn
She somebody's wife . . . or husband, maybe, and she is a plumber at one
point, oh, and is none to happy when she discovers her husband in the
lighting box is having an affair with the woman on the sound system –
also known as a tape recorder – a surgical stocking in the glove box of
their car being the tell-tale clue . . . don’t ask. She is also furious
her song has been cut – unfortunately she squeezes it back in.
Debbie Donnelly is Felicity, a society member who makes up for her lack
of talent with a surfeit of enthusiasm. Much of the first act is made up
of her various entrances . . . until eventually she gets one right.
Great, incompetent fun.
Then there is Minnie in a delightful performance from Christine Bland.
The actress playing . . . whatever the part is, has stormed out and
Minnie, from the wardrobe department, with no stage experience or desire
to gain any and who doesn’t know the play, the part or the script has
bravely/stupidly stepped into the breech.
In trousers and jacket, with a stuck on moustache (drawn on when she
lost it) and male wig, script in hand, usually on the wrong page, her
expressionless reading (including stage directions), and permanent look
of bewilderment along with acting not even within hailing distance of
wooden, is comedy gold.
Finally, we have Gordon, the token man, to play Mr whoever and at least
one Mrs as the wife of . . . some other Mr or other, perhaps. By this
point most of the audience were struggling to remember who they were,
let alone who the cast were supposed to be. Gordon, played by the ever-reliable Jon
Richardson, and Thelma, we suspect, are on less than friendly terms,
having a row about his eye liner as they enter, but then Thelma is no
fan of Mrs Reece either and she doesn’t have anything complimentary to
say about Felicity. A trend perhaps? One suspects Thelma does not have a
very long Christmas card list
Christine Bland as Minnie and Jon Richardson as Gordon
Now add doors that don’t open, a bathroom door halfway up a wall,
missing props and wrong lighting and sound cues, and Mrs Reece's cooking
demonstration at the start of Act 2 is almost a welcome relief – or
would have been had it not been as disastrous as the play itself.
But that is what the Farndale collection are all about, Amateur, with a
capital A, dramatics, where if it can go wrong you can guarantee it will,
and if it can’t go wrong . . . Farndale will still manage to prove it
can. Scattered through the script are innocent double
entendres, not surprising as one of the writers, David McGillivray, also
writes for Julian Clary. His partner for all 10 of the Farndale saga was
entertainer, conjurer, drag artist and, in his day job, West Midlands’
barrister, Walter Zerlin Jr, who died of cancer in 2001, aged 51, with
Farndale’s Peter Pan unfinished.
The pair both had professional and amateur writing and appearances in
their locker and the Farndale collection gently pokes affectionate fun
at amateur societies, and some of the characters all societies have
probably come across. It is a glorious chance for amateur companies to
laugh at themselves, and audiences are more than delighted to join them.
Guaranteed chaos and laughs with director Louise Price, keeping
everything on a . . . sort of even . . . uneven keel until 29-04-23. Roger Clarke 21-04-23 |
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