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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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A night of sublime madness A Handful of Laughs Moorpool Players Moorpool Hall, Harborne ****
AN evening of sublime inanity, its brightness dimmed only
by the substantial gaps that are part of this bill of five plays by
Michael Green, finds 15 players presenting 35 roles and doing so quite
splendidly. Did coarse acting ever have it so good?
At various times, we have the table that loses its legs, the actor
who is blatantly reading his lines not very well, the voice that stands
in for a failed doorbell, and the Noel Coward character who loses
several armfuls of blood but tries to carry on declaiming.
This is the sanguinary centrepiece of Present Slaughter,
with Mark Earey bleeding bravely while Laura King (Lavinia) does a very
amusing solo tango. It is the last offering on the bill, the culmination
of an evening of determined daftness that is deftly directed by John
Healey. Was it he, I wonder, who decreed that one of the evening's
characters should pronounce every S as sssh, on the grounds that
she is eventually required to say, “I hate the sight of him.”
John warns in his notes that Last Call for Breakfast is the
Players' first venture into the theatre of the avant-garde and that
audiences have a habit of failing to understand it. It is time to report
that I have just joined the club.
OUTSIZE SALT POT
The characters are He, She and Sugar Cube – with She played by
Claire Osborne, who offers some reasonably bad ballet with He (Richard
Quarmby) before she begins popping up out of an outsize salt pot to
reveal the best voice of the night – effortlessly loud, perfectly clear,
a pleasure to hear. She ensured that I didn't care that I didn't
understand.
Elsewhere, we have had earlier sightings of Mark Earey as the
police inspector in Streuth – in which Linda Robinson
(Janet) scores full marks for knowing that there are only two Rs in
drawing room – and as Vladimir Pederastovitch, otherwise known as
Captain Sodov, in The Cherry Sisters, which is as near as we are
going to get to Chekhov on this unpredictable evening of broad-brush
comedy.
A Collier's Tuesday Tea brims bravely with
adopted
This is grassroots theatre to be treasured. A joy. To 15.5.10. John Slim |
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