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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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Selling a jumble of phobias
Bazaar and Rummage
The Nonentities
The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster
**** IT IS easy to forget, if indeed many
people knew in the first place, that Sue Townsend was playwright before
Adrian Mole started scribbling his secret diaries. And Bazaar and Rummage was born the same year as Master Mole, 1982. It is an old fashioned jumble sale organised by an agoraphobics self help group, not that many sufferers will venture out of the safe cocoon of their homes to see it, especially if they are being helped by Gwenda, played by Lynn Ravenhill. She is a sort of cross between Hyacinth Bucket
and Thora Hird, and is their unqualified social worker, who knows better
than the professionals, and whose idea of treatment seems more inclined
to nourish a condition rather than defeat it. She gave up her life to look after daddy, who by
all accounts was a bully until the day he died, under a standard lamp
that Gwenda still sees as daddy’s beacon on earth. Having lost daddy,
she has found God and has a line in hands-on healing which seems to have
its origins in all-in wresting. As an ex-agoraphobic she sees herself as an
expert on the condition, which puts into an uneasy partnership with the
“scruffbag” Fliss, played in rather more tough love style by Faye
Stanton. Lefty Fliss, a student social worker, is at the opposite end of
the political, and indeed treatment spectrum to Gwenda, who as time goes
on explodes into a tirade against her young rival accusing her of being
a lefty, liberal, pinko . . .etc . . .Communist. In a group that could well find sponsorship from
Librium, Vallium and Mogadon, their Agoraphobic charges are led by
Katrina, played by Marika Farr, an ex-club singer whose condition seems
to stem, in part, from an unfortunate incident involving pineapples
while appearing in Leicester some four and half years ago. She is not helped by husband Maurice reading all
the goriest, most violent news to her when he gets home and then pasting
them in a scrapbook. Hence the somewhat vacant Katrina, who to be fair
is not one of nature’s gifted, believes the streets are full of riots
and are populated entirely by rapists and muggers, while the roads and
motorways are full of people burning to death in multi car pile-ups. Her days are full of . . . nothing really
apart from listening with religious fervour to her hero Barry
Manilow. As an extra phobia to add to her ample collection she
hates everything about . . . well let’s just say she declares she
would rather do a jigsaw than sex. Katrina doesn’t actually like
Maurice, while, not that secretly, Gwenda does. Then there is Bell Bell, Isabel, played with a
Finally we have Margaret, foul mouthed Margaret,
played by Jenny Luke, with a son she reckons only came out of the womb
to see what he could nick. She has not been out of the house for 17
years, making her the senior member of the group. She is disliked by the
controlling and pious Gwenda both for her foul mouth and, perhaps more
important, her refusal to be controlled. Some of their exchanges are
f***ing priceless. You might feel sorry for airhead, born again
virgin, Katrina with her controlling husband, or hygiene obsessed Bell
Bell, or even Gwenda with her life stolen by a brutal demanding father,
but it is Margaret who stops the show. The demons of the rest are not
things with which you can easily empathise, they don’t grip the
imagination and seem designed as much for laughs as sympathy, comedy
over compassion. But then there is bleedin’ Margaret, hard as
nails, streetwise, or she would be if she ever managed go outside,
Margaret. Her demons are real, her demons are immediately understood. As
she bares her soul in graphic detail the laughter stops, the smiles
vanish. Hers is a harrowing tale anyone can understand and the audience
empathy is palpable. This is no longer a comedy, it is a jolt of reality
just as arresting as Gwenda’s electric shock treatments. Understandably it takes a moment or two before
the pace can pick up again but as a nice touch at the end we have the
appearance of Hilary Thompson as the local WPC popping into the local
church hall to see why the lights were on, and immediately bursting into
tears because she doesn’t like meeting people – they are are all liars
and thieves - and can’t cope with community policing, showing perhaps
that you don’t need posh medical phobias to have your own personal
terrors. With Gwenda, and her car, having stormed off, our
three agoraphobics are stranded until Fliss persuades them to brave the
cold dark streets between them and the safety of home, helped by the
reluctant WPC. They might not be cured, but at least as they step,
terrified, out into the night they have all at least made a start. This is a fine studio performance, directed by
Terry Cooper Day with the cast giving us six very different and distinct
characters who keep the interest from beginning to end with plenty of
laughs along the way. Set in 1985 some of the language and issues will
not exactly be seen as politically correct 30 years on, 33 from when the
play was written, but one of Sue Townsend’s strengths is she writes it
as she sees it, as it is, or was in this case. And that is how it should
be seen in the context of the times. It is a funny, poignant, sad and although highly
entertaining, it also gives a glimpse, amid all the laughter, of a
frightening world of phobias where rationality struggles to exist. An
enjoyable evening that makes you think. To 22-11-14. Roger Clarke
17-11-14 |
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more
aloof air by Amanda Salt. She has lost her husband to a suicide and
seems almost normal on the face of it apart from her fear of going out,
until we find out her day consists entirely of cleaning her house from
top to bottom, and if she is disturbed by a phone call or caller, she
has to start all over again. Rubber gloves are part of her normal dress.