This play may not have been true to real life, but I rate this production overall as true to the script, and bringing the whole thing to life. What more could one ask of a production than this kind of truthfulness and liveliness? Perhaps only that it should achieve the three big E’s, for which I award it full marks: it Engaged the audience,Entertained us, and provided an Enjoyable evening. These, then, are the five words on which I would rate this production, and do so highly.

Marion Millinger as Director wisely gave us a leisurely start which enabled each of the holidaymakers, by both mime and words, to establish something of his or her character, and then moved smoothly from one scene to another, this aspect being helped by Ron Millinger’s flexible set and (keep it in the family!) Stephen Millinger’s sound which ensured that the frequent music always arrive dead on cue, matching the excellent timing by the cast. The costumes by Chantal Suppanee and Pat Champion, and the props by Pauline Hutton, captured well the social class and the time (Niki Lauda, corned beef, and – with Phil’s words “it’s being so cheerful” – even an echo of ITMA’s Mona Lott). I loved especially Pat’s battered period suitcase.

In general, the cast did the play proud. Either I am going deaf or Emma Dow as Prompt was unemployed.

Roland Fahey as the much-put-upon driver who had heard it all before was suitably lugubrious as he sat trapped (yes, him too) at the wheel of the charabanc (lovely period word that) muttering to himself about this about these “bloody geriatric delinquents” (and later, unrecognizably, as the jet shop man). As the driver, we felt for him, especially in the face of

Henry, played true to type by Ron Millinger as the interfering know-all back-seat driver. This is the same Henry/Ron who, in the talent contest, nearly brought the house down playing the spoon to a temperamental wind-up (and winding-down) gramophone.

Eric Champion as Jimmy was every bit the hail-fellow-well-met joker in this pack of pensioners, loud, crude, insensitive (a piece ofanti-type casting!) happily wed to newcomer Anne Weeldon’s Joan who gave as good as she got in their frequently sexual teasing exchanges. Welcome Anne, I hope to see you on this stage again.

Katherine Lewis gave an unforgettable performance as the domineering, judgmental, interfering, and little short of terrifying Kathleen, unquestioned as the leader of a little threesome comprising

Maureen,Doris Neville-Davies, who brought out this character’s prejudice against Asian shopkeepers, disgust at kissing honeymooners, and severe disproval of Pat’s behaviour; and

Jessie,Olwen Holme, who gave a brilliant rendering of a week woman who is wedded to her cats and who constantly echoes others’ words. This is a woman who has never really grown up, is innocent of French letters and of 69, and is covered in embarrassment when she lets the words “nice bum” escape her.

Like several other members of the cast, Olwen seized with both hands the moments when the (metaphorical) spotlight fell on her, most memorably the recitation the Director added to the talent contest with Jessie reciting Eleanor Farjeon’s poem Mrs Malone which she would have leant by heart at school and which she recited nervously exactly as she would have done as the child who was still within her. And we all nearly cheered when at last the worm turned and she turned on Kathleen saying she could to stick her friendship “up your bum” adding that she had been waiting to say that for 25 years.

Clare -Alex Alderson – and Debbie - Laura Armitage - came over as young waitresses who the pensioners would no doubt call “flighty”. Together they provided a fine foil to the pensioners, as did Pat’s middle- aging daughter Sally – Sophie Tame – and son-in-law John - Robert Hardy- from whom I might have looked for a stronger reaction to revelations about his wife’s younger days.

As for the female half of the sad Sangri-Las, Cathy Dunn as Edna, the icy and venomous wife-in-name-only, is the first to show clearly the contrast between the public and private faces.

One moment she is able to pin an artificial smile – more grin – on her face, the next to respond to Phil’s comment about one of the dances “The punters love it” with the cynical “Just shows how thick they are”, and going hammer and tongs at Phil at every chance. Unfortunately Edna was at the back of the stage for most of the time so we were unable to see clearly enough her expressions of disdain, contempt, and jealousy. It might have been better if her base could have been at the side of the stage.

The Director led us into the gulf between this couple by having them enter down the side aisle, one on the right, one on the left, as far away from each other as was possible. A nice stroke.

But now I must return the Principals.

Gill Lambourne exploited the mischievous side of Pat’s nature: the ordering of a double brandy, the refusal to buy widow’s black jet – I could go on and on. And she showed clearly how, Phil having made the first move, Pat made much, if not most, of the running. Then we have her to her final half-shouted words to her daughter –“Stay out of my life”. Her scenes with Phil were, as I wrote earlier, moving and well-nigh believable. I have only one criticism. That is that, while her later assertiveness and joy were acted with full conviction, those moments, admittedly few in number and of short duration, when she sadly remembered what she had lost, were not acted with the same conviction, notable when she says “I’ve had a bit of a weep”. Words yeas, but I detected little evidence of a post-weeping state.

Phil brought out the best in Pat, while Pat brought out the best in Phil. And in a similar Gill Lambourne’s acting brought out the best inRobert Johnson as an actor. This was more than the Shangri-La and wretchedly married Phil/Robert. Somehow he seemed at times not fully at ease on the stage – until he and Pat got together when they gelled as characters and matured as actors, and brought out clearly not only the sadness of loneliness but also the overarching power of love. I left the theatre hoping for, and almost confident about, a good future together for Pat and Phil.

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Two by Jim Cartwright: April 2011

Review by Colin Archer

This play, exploring as it does so many manifestations of couple-ness– the poignant, the wickedly comic, even the tragic – needs firm direction if it is to hold together and to be experienced as having a unity. This direction it receives in full measure from Emma Dow. Emma ensures all the necessary changes of pace, establishes the varying tones, and manages the exits and entrances with consummate skill.

The decision to present the play in the Studio was exactly right : the intimacy of a pub could not have been achieved as fully on the main stage. So was the decision not to limit the cast to two as in the original productions, but to draw on a wider range of actors given that they all delivered good performances, albeit only the two principals having to sustain their roles for the whole length of the play. The others put in brief - though intense - appearances on which they could focus all their skills and effort.

Howard Tame, most memorable as poor Stanley in The Birthday Party, transformed himself perfectly into the central role of Landlord, a pub-owning Northern ‘cheeky chappie’ with an alleged obsession with money. This was a stalwart performance, above all in his interaction with Sally Penman in the other central role, that of Landlady.

Sally’s versatility is impressive, here playing a feisty, hard-nosed, Northern pub landlady, a graceless Gracie Fields and incipient alcoholic, who could well find a job in The Rovers Return. An impressive performance.

The couple’s constant bickering, sniping, and worse, interspersed with smiling exchanges with punters, seen and unseen, was lethal, and central to the play. The stripping away of their defensive shells in the final scene was moving enough almost to bring tears to the eyes of the most hard-bitten critic. I have heard many stage screams, but most are just that, stage screams, in which the actor seems to hold something back. Seldom have I encountered such a full-throated and convincing scream as that which Sally let rip in that last scene. Such confidence, and so justified.

I went through the credits to seek the name of a dialect coach, but found none. Even without such help, the whole cast succeeded in leaving Surrey voices well behind them.

The monologue by Judith Hopkins playing a stiff-limbed Old Woman escaping briefly from a desperate life caring for a very sick husband, commanded all our attention by her slow, quiet, poignant delivery, enhanced by a well-judged change in the lighting. Judith richly deserved the immediate spontaneous applause given by the Saturday night audience.

EnterAdam Pollington, the outrageously flirtatious, skirt-chasing Moth with what must be the world’s most noxious chat-up lines. This is a wickedly comic figure from whom Adam extracted even more fun than was in the script as his eyes constantly ranged around for other female prey. Adam nearly brought the house down.

Moth was briefly interrupted by the arrival of his regular “bleeding bird”, the gormless Maudie played by Francesca Kitch who knew she was being exploited by Moth but kept letting it happen. When Moth started dancing – if that’s what one can call his crazy cavorting - and seemed to put his back out, I for one felt pleased that he had somehow got his comeuppance, becoming dependant on Maudie. But when she left him, and he called after her “marry me”, Maudie was back to her old subservience, and the way she hurtled back and swooned into his arms was as comic as anything Moth had come up with. He’ll never marry her though, will he?

When Fran returned in a later episode playing the part of ‘The Other Woman’, she was hardly recognisable as the same actor. Quite an achievement.

Roland Fahey gave a spell-binding performance as the Old Man, still part of a married couple despite the death of his wife, now full of home-spun philosophy. Again the lighting added to the focus, and Roland’s slow-paced delivery spoke volumes.

Next to arrive were Mr. Igor – Alex Williams – and his wife – Tori Reilly, with a passionate hymn in praise of big strong men, and dismissal of her husband whom she calls at various times “pathetic”, “dinky”, “my detailed little man” and “my compact chap”, asking whether he is a man or a mouse and answering her own question with a series of squeaks.

It seems a strange piece of casting to have such a bulky man playing the role of her husband, though Alex did his level best to show that what his wife calls “weediness” is more to do with behaviour than stature. And even a worm can turn as this one does next time he heads for the bar. Here is a couple who eventually shows that love can lie under the surface in many seemingly fractious relationships, foreshadowing the final scene.

In a quick return, Tori Reilly is no longer the dominant partner but the sad, downtrodden Lesley, her eyes glued to the ground, a wife who needs the permission of her domineering, violent, jealous, partner even to go to the loo. Tori inhabited that role as convincingly as she did that of Mrs. Igor, while Jack Masters, a former Earp in Wild Wild Women, made Roy into one of those only too real – chillingly real men who figure in some women’s lives.

Then it’s time for Robert Johnson as the patient Fred – and Olwen Holme as Alice, previously detained in a psychiatric hospital, a woman addicted to television, old westerns, and Elvis Presley. When she bursts memorably into song – if you could call such a tuneless ear-shattering sound ‘singing’ – “Are you lonesome tonight”, Fred still holds on to his patience and the audience could weep – with laughing. Again, though, love breaks through.

Francesca Kitch is then back, now as the ‘Other Woman’, a sexy lady beginning to go to seed, and slightly drunk. Determined to have it out then and there with her lover and his wife, she fails to find them and contents herself with one of Jim Cartwright’s delightful monologues which she performs with frustrated gusto.

Finally there’s the Boy, another strange piece of casting, Louis Whittle, surely too old to have been left outside the pub with pop and crisps. Louis acts manfully (maybe an unfortunate word) to lop years off his age and size, and does so with some success. When he spots his father, just one more of the many characters others see but who remain invisible to the audience, his response is a delight. Meanwhile he has brought out the Landlady’s frustrated mothering instinct which leads us, still all innocent, into that final terrifying denouement in which the Landlady’s face initially turns to stone and she becomes almost catatonic before bursting out with the truth. Here we learn about the past tragedy which has ended many a marriage, one in which a couple seem unable to talk about their shared grief, and one which explains so much about the brittle interaction between this landlord and landlady which has punctuated this play.

These days, says the Landlord in that final scene, their relationship, is all “Hate, hate for sure”, but the last words of the play are very different. We leave the theatre-cum-pub with a modicum of hope but with an abundance of delight from a remarkable production.

The number of skilled new actors augers well for this already gifted Society.

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Wild Wild Women February 2011

Review by Colin Archer (abridged)

Shepperton Players treated us to a highly entertaining evening of drama, song and dance set in the Wild West. A racy plot, and crisp witty dialogue, is teamed up with tuneful music, itself often witty.

As Director, Gill Lambourn gave us a fast-paced evening which gave full scope for all the wit, and successfully held together a far larger cast – 23 in number – that Shepperton Players are used to, with many of their regular lead actors reinforced by newcomers of talent. There were no notably weak performances; given the large cast I can only comment individually on a few of the strong ones.

The evening opened with a stalwart performance by Emma Dow in the role of Alice Tibbs, proprietor of the violent Peaceful Haven Saloon, a role which held the whole disparate story-line together, much as Emma had done so successfully as the MC and Cook in the Canterbury Tales.

Clive Tibbits gave an equally stalwart performance as the doubly-frustrated Hanging Judge West, frustrated initially by the fact that killers kept getting themselves bumped off before he could get his hands on them, and later because, like all then other men, he could not get his hands on his wife. In a nicely judged performance, Clive came over both as weak and yet just about strong enough so that, in the face of the wives’ non-industrial action, he could hold the warring men together. This rip-roarin’ combination of men was played well by Alistair Ross, Ron Millinger, andEric Champion, plus the unwed multi-function Peter Smith as cowboy, Friar, and (especially memorable) comic drunk. Their Dancing Backwards routine, in which they were joined by assorted Earps, nearly brought the house down.

Lorna Doyle produced a memorable performance as the diminutive Sister Priscilla, truly a bundle of the joy she preached – and of energy, a force to be reckoned with, a reckless, wide-eyed innocent abroad. Her facial expressions were ever changing delights, and her death deeply comic (‘You’re not going to die’ meeting the determined riposte ‘O yes I am’). I was devastated to see such a talented performer depart so early in Act 1, but joyful when she reappeared with halo and wings, a rich addition to the heavenly host.

An equally memorable performance came from newcomer Maggs Latter as Lola, Madam of the Red Candle Bordello, and it was right that she shared curtain call with Lorna. Maggs’ richly-enunciated, razor-sharp, and outrageous French accent – every bit as authentic as any in ‘Allo ‘Allo – was to be treasured, and her body language to be admired. One mark of a good actor is, of course, how they behave on stage when the attention of the audience is not primarily on them. In this respect Maggs scored highly. While the Romeo and Juliet ballad was being played out centre stage, she sat at the side, her neck and spine firmly upright - then, as she gradually reacted to the tale, letting her head slip gently sideways, next drooping her shoulders until at the conclusion she wept. Maggs Latter. Remember the name, and watch for it.

Sally Penman, Olwen Holme, and Doris Neville-Davies, the primly-attired wives who were persuaded to join forces with Alice Tibbs, managed to convey their suppressed sexual needs with conviction, joined half-heartedly by Francesca Kitch as the ambivalent recently-wed Myrtle, who found her husband played by Adam Pollington, well-nigh irresistible.

By contrast, the erotically attired (for those times) soiled doves –Tori Reilly, Abigail Murrell, Sue Dye, and Carrie Millinger, flaunted their blatant commercial sexuality outside their Red Candle Joint (into which we were not, wisely, invited, except in the imagination: the alleged move of their second-hand piano giving rise to many of the play’s best double-entendres).

Wyatt and the other Erks (correction, Earps) – Geoff Buckingham, Jack Masters, Louis Whittle, and Mark Woolard - provided more of a side-show in a series of a wickedly-good comic turns.

As a son of the McLairds, and as a daughter of their feuding enemies the Clantons, newcomers Ryan McAndrew and Alex Alderson made promising debuts, and later, playing their Shakespearean counterparts Romeo and Juliet, touched not only Madam Lola but also the audience, while still extracting the comic side of things as befits this musical.

The set was appropriately simple and flexible, the lighting understated and effective, and the shooting stars, part of the special effects, brilliant.

I must make special mention of Gill Lambourn’ choreography which was one of the strong points of the evening. Although I hold to my previously held view that musicals do not play to Shepperton Players strengths, which lie more in multi-layered plots and complex characters, it is clear from the present production that, given the right choice of musical , the augmented Shepperton Players can put on a thumpingly good musical.

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Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen: October 2010

Review by Colin Archer

I wish that I had been able to see the Shepperton Players’ stage production of this play. Illness prevented my being there, so this review can only be based on the DVD made at the time. Watching the DVD is of course a very different experience from being present in the audience. I am sure I missed some of the nuances of the acting. I certainly missed the shared audience reaction. And I struggled at times to avoid making judgments appropriate to a film but not to a stage production. The only advantage, albeit limited, is that I could watch it twice.

Everything written here must therefore be filtered though these facts and be seen as of limited validity.

As so often in the past, Shepperton Players opted for a complex and difficult play. The difficulty was not that confronting all involved in the original productions in the 1880s, namely the scandal of touching on issues denied, or at least hidden from sight, such as adultery, incest, congenital syphilis (referred to euphemistically by Oswald as his “worm-eaten birth”), and finally euthanasia : these are all now (sometimes too starkly) in the public domain. It was not even, perhaps, the convoluted speech in which these matters were hinted at, or adjusting to a society in which appearances were all that mattered. The real difficulty for modern productions is how to bring to life a script with so much static talking (often with only two characters on stage) and so little movement. It is the same difficulty which keeps so many Shaw plays off the modern stage.

I was encouraged when the curtain rose by the deep dark Nordic music and the meticulously recreated late C19 drawing room, above all by the portrait of the late Captain Alving, the ghost whose sins were visited on so many of his own generation as well as, terribly, on the next, and who looked down proud, supercilious, contemptuous.

All five actors confronted challenges far greater than any of the parts they played in any of the other plays I have reviewed since 2008 (though some may well have taken on major parts before then). On this occasion, though, none rose memorably to the challenge.

The most creditable performance came from Olwen Holme in the pivotal role of the widowed Mrs Alving (a mini-Queen Victoria in appearance) who expressed well both her reluctance and her determination to start expressing radical ideas and exposing painful facts. Here indeed was a thoughtful and spirited person, her own woman. And Olwen was throughout in command of the stage space, rightly so because this represented Mrs Alving’s own home. This had also been the childhood home of her son Oswald played by Philip L.Milne who, like his mother, moved easily around the stage space/drawing room, pacing well enough the step-by-step revelation of his dire situation.

The rest of the cast faced a central dilemma.

On the one hand, the play requires them to portray characters who behave stiffly as the times demands, and who are not fully at ease, or comfortable, on Mrs Alving’s territory: Jacob (Robert Johnson) is a mere carpenter entering the ‘big house’; Pastor Manders (Pete Smith) has avoided visiting for years, and represents values which Mrs Alving increasingly rejects with her reference to “old and obsolete beliefs”; even the position in the household of Regina (Carrie Millinger) is ambiguous (family member or retainer?), an uncertainty which Carrie brings out tellingly on two occasions when invited to join Mrs Alving and her son at the table, and does so only cautiously, moving her chair a little away from the table and not facing them straight on.

On the other hand, exactly the same stiffness and discomfort required of the three of them as characters can be seen as failings in them as actors lacking in stage presence and confidence. And sadly – again through the prism of a DVD – I far too frequently saw these as actors, not as the characters they were portraying, to the extent that, at times, I felt as if I was present at a reading of the script rather than a production which brought it to life.

How could this central dilemma be resolved? The answer is beyond me, and, I suspect, beyond those who determined to tackle this demanding play in Sunbury in 2010.

The play did fortunately come to life from time to time. In the opening scene Regina’s sudden and convincingly-acted outbursts at Jacob gave a glimpse of the suppressed emotions which lie hidden not only within this determined young woman but also under so much of this play.Robert Johnson gave us a suitably oily and opportunistic Jacob, but Pete Smith’s Pastor Manders, one of the most repellent of stage characters (think, in a different form, of Iago), who judges books without opening them and people without really knowing them, came over as rather less smug and obnoxious than I might have expected.

It took a ‘real’ fire, that of the Orphanage, finally to set light to this production, and in the final scene of all, that between mother and son, I was at last propelled well past viewing actors into the presence of ‘real’ people, even ones with echoes of today when a son dying of AIDS returns to die in the closest company with which he was born, that of his mother. The final cry “the sun, the sun” embraced many meanings, including surely an appeal to some ancient Sun God kinder than the forbidding travesty of the Christian God represented by the Pastor.

In the unenviable role of Director, Roland Fahey gave us a convincing sense of this constrained, claustrophobic, and benighted world, ensured clarity as the story-lines of past and present unfolded, and highlighted key moments: a good start.

This play is interesting as a document in social history, and of huge importance in the development of modern drama made possible by one of the West’s greatest playwrights. But to revive it as a convincing play for today is beyond most companies, not only amateur ones.

Brave try Shepperton Players! But remember Robert Browning’s lines

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp

Or what’s a heaven for?

Heaven must, as they say, wait.

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The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society's Production of Macbeth by David McGillvray and Walter Zerlin Jnr: July 2010

Review by Colin Archer

In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth refers to “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself”, and Banquo to “our naked frailties … that suffer in exposure”.

The Farndale Society suffers from both ludicrously “vaulting ambition” which makes them imagine they could tackle the Scottish tragedy, and from the “naked frailties thatsuffer in exposure” there on their stage. These are, of course, about the only two things the two plays have in common. But how about the Shepperton Players: in tackling this comedy are they in turn being over-ambitious, and are frailties exposed?

This seemed unlikely given their previous successes in staging challenging plays including Euripides, Orton, Chaucer, Bond, and Pinter. But the present play was a big ask, one of a very different kind.

The first issue, for me at least, is that here we have little more than a joke which might have been used as a story-line for a one-act play, but is hard to sustain for a full-length play. Reading the play on the page I was swiftly bored. Could the stage production avoid the same fate?

Then there was the question whether all involved could overcome my sneaky thought that this choice of play was bit of an in-joke: a play chosen by one Society, which knows what can potentially go wrong on stage, revelling in another Society’s actual sufferings – a not unfamiliar example of Schadenfreude?

And could the whole cast keep straight faces throughout?

At least I should not have worried about straight faces. These are all disciplined actors, and they remained throughout firmly in their roles as members of the Farndale cast with that cast’s varying reactions to the constant disasters: bewilderment, resignation, squabbling, and finally acceptance that Farndale productions were always thus.

The cast, many playing several roles, was never less than competent (perhaps that word is less than generous, so I’ll upgrade it the “competent plus”). This included Doris Neville-Davies as a diminutive Macbeth dominated physically (as well as emotionally as portrayed by The Bard) by his (her?) wife. There were, in addition, a few truly memorable performances.

Mark Woollard set the ball rolling as Gwynneth, with a histrionic near-manic playing of – or, rather, at– the piano, less a pianist than a Joanna-thumper. His abandoned casting aside of sheet after sheet of music was a brilliant variation of – or addition to – the script, one of several which Olwen Holme as Director instigated or encouraged throughout the evening. Mark’s quick-change into Adjudicator George Pineapple made me initially doubt if this was indeed the same actor. His outrageously camp performance had me in stitches. His final appearance as a drag queen was simply dazzling.

Lorna Doyle as the Farndale actress Minnie who had almost lost her voice but still had to soldier on as Banquo whispering her way through and miming, brought the exact degree of over-acting required – and more - including acrobatics with which I feared she could easily do herself harm or injure anyone sharing the stage with her.

Most memorable of all, for me, was Farndale’s Lady Macbeth played by Steve Lewis (late of Igor and Dr Rance), reluctantly press-ganged from the Farndale stage crew. With a squeaky voice and stiff unwomanly body language, he clearly hated the whole thing, towering unwillingly over Macbeth when he/she attempted a kiss.

The Witches were great. They could cackle for England (correction, Scotland), their distinctive noses giving them away when their wearers changed for other parts.

Marion Millinger (later Lady MacDuff) set the scene as Chairwoman MrsReece, succeeding admirably in her failure to hold things together, helped in her opening scene by the lighting folk’s requisite incompetence. This provided a hilarious start to the action.

Hilarity, though, lacks staying power.

This leads to the big question: could Shepperton Players hold the interest and initial pleasure of the audience? Such a play – more farce than anything – requires quick-fire action, but the situation, and script, call for constant interruptions. As the play went on I attended more and more to audience reactions as well as my own. Reactions became more muted, the joke palled, laughter became fainter and rarer.

I look forwards to exchanging Banquo’s Ghost for Ibsen’s (the next production by Shepperton Players, not the Farndale lot).

The name McGillivray (that of the co-author) is rooted in the Gaelic words Mac Gillebrheith meaning “Son of the Servant of Judgement”. I can only hope to have been a more faithful servant of judgment than sweet George Passionfruit.

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Birthday Party by Harold Pinter: April 2010

Review by Colin Archer

The Shepperton Players treated us to a fluent, brilliantly cast, and intelligent production of this remarkable and difficult play.

The set faithfully followed that prescribed by the author. The Director, Steve Lewis, had a choice between the dull dinginess of a boarding house of the 1950s and the bright stage lighting needed to appreciate all the nuances of the acting, wisely opting for the latter, and ably supported by the lighting designer and operator.

The first actor to appear, Roland Fahey, made a very convincing Petey, a solid and somewhat stolid figure who opts out of much of the action by heading out to his job as a deck-chair attendant. The moment we met Meg we realised that this man is in no sense ‘head of the household’. He was more than reasonably patient, and only slightly tetchy, in the inconsequential breakfast exchanges with Meg which included some absurd questions which, however innocuous, prefigured the even more absurd question which, with truly evil intent, the men in black would later use to torment the lodger.

It is difficult to imagine a better portrayal of Meg than that of Gill Lambourn. We saw first her dowdy, shapeless, mid-1950s, housewifely clothes (only one example of the excellent work of Chantal Suppanee who was responsible for costumes). Then came the little-girl voice which, despite some echoes of Frank Spenser’s wife Betty, Irene Handl, and even Pam Ayres, proved one which Gill quickly made all her own – or rather Meg’s. Then came the movement, that of a woman ill at ease in her own body, one minute awkwardly jerky, the next minute hovering uneasily and sometimes inappropriately.

What holds this character together? - starting off as a seemingly dutiful housewife; then becoming all-mumsy to her lodger; next suggestively sexual towards him with hints of what might be happening when she takes him tea in bed, and with her insistence on reading a sexual dimension to the word ‘succulent’; finally becoming a little girl herself with her childish delight in the idea of paying Blind Man’s Buff (still awkward in a party dress inappropriate for the occasion). In fact Gill did hold all these sides together into a convincing whole, a slightly simple and decidedly neurotic woman past her prime. A weak woman too, one who, like may weak people, can suddenly burst out uncontrollably, as she did at mention of a wheelbarrow. Gill made much of this reference, aware that it is an important piece of foreshadowing.

Meg is a very important character in the play, but the central character is the lodger Stanley played faultlessly by Howard Tame. Here is another weak character who can suddenly burst out in fury, and here is another actor who can highlight an important piece of foreshadowing by his slow and careful removal and polishing of his spectacles, revealing how short-sighted he is without them. He is a born victim.

His outfits (thank you Chantal) were exactly right for a person close to being a nonentity, a man half-living between fantasy pasts and a fantasy future, with even a fantasy present thrown in when it might be useful - such as claiming to be the Manager of this Boarding House (soon after denying that it is a Boarding House at all).

I cannot help wondering if Howard has researched such characters in psychiatric units. I have encountered such patients - often described as sociopaths, or as suffering from personality disorders. In this role Howard has certainly got them to a T.

Stanley has only a shaky sense of self and it would take little to undermine or destroy even that. And when McCann and Goldberg appear to do their “job” on him he is soon like a rabbit caught in a car’s headlights – or in this case the torchlight. As Stanley slipped into incoherence Howard could still give him some skilful body language, as in the languid and puzzled half-lifting of the head at the mention of Basingstoke. His final arrival in a catatonic state, and ultimately into the anguished howl of some wild animal, were portrayed terrifyingly well.

This takes me to Goldberg and McCann, entering (thank you Director and Chantal) in black suits like undertakers – which is what, in a sense, they are. Each of these, like other characters here, lacks convincing identities. Is McCann really a recently defrocked priest? This hardly fits with the violence in which he demands that Stanley confess. Was Goldberg really once an apprentice vet? Surely such a person would not treat even an animal as cruelly as he treats Stanley, reducing him to little more than an animal himself. Alistair Ross gave McCann an utterly convincing Irish accent. His obsessive tearing of newspaper into strips was worryingly neurotic. His capacity for menacing stillness, and his sudden movements to cut off Stanley’s escapes, were handled really well. His sudden extreme violence when it came was by then half expected. Clive Tibbits as Goldberg read typically Jewish sentence structure into – or imposed it upon – many of his lines in a way which I had not detected when simply reading the script. Together they provided the mood of menace which came to dominate the play. Their quick-fire interrogation of Stanley was simply lethal. I was reminded of the Soviet show trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and Kafka, in the way no explicit charges were set out, and no time given for the defendant to reply. Poor, poor, Stanley.

I round off this survey of the cast with Sophie Tame, who delighted us with her performance as the Fairy Godmother Glynis in Sleeping Beauty, and was now cast as Lulu. This is not a part with anywhere near as much for an actor to get her teeth into as the major parts in The Birthday Party. But when Sophie got her chance, right at the end, she seized it with both hands, roundly berating Goldberg for ‘taking advantage’ of her – after we had seen her the previous evening throwing herself, literally and substantially, upon him!

This sudden opportunity at the end takes me back to where I started this review, to Roland Fahey’s Petey. He, too, has his big moment right at the end and seized it memorably. This is when he suddenly realised – or at least sensed – the gravity of the situation, and shouted at Goldberg and McCann “Leave him alone”, then to Stanley “Don’t let them tell you what to do”.

Steve Lewis as Director paced the play very well, allowing - encouraging perhaps - a relaxed slow start which established a kind of everyday domestic life, and which gave every chance for the main characters to establish themselves with the audience. It was like a powerful engine building up steam, and by the end hurtling to destruction. Steve certainly drew the best out of this very strong cast, and drew out what I regard as – in technical critical jargon – the ‘Controlling Idea’, which in this play is the unreliability and fragility of identity, whether it being the conflicting elements of selfhood within Meg, the shifting (shifty even) pasts (and even names) of other central characters, or the dismantling and destruction on stage of the Stanley’s very being, almost as terrifying in an emotional sense as the physical putting out of Gloucester’s eyes in King Lear.

All who participated inThe Birthday Party can – if they are inclined to do so – rest on the laurels they richly deserve for this memorable production.

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The Sleeping Beauty by David Cregan: January 2010

Review by Colin Archer

The children in the audience clearly enjoyed this Pantomime, judged by their boos of the villain, their engagement in the repartee, their ready participation in the game of Grandmother’s Footsteps up on stage, but above all by their faces and voices at the interval and again at the end of the show. Kids are, of course, the most important members of the audience at Panto, not just because for some it may be the first steps in a lifetime of enjoyment of theatre.

Typical of Shepperton Players who never settle for the easy option, this panto makes heavy demands on the Director and set designers - demands such as a dream scene and an impassable wood which could only be met on a modest stage by great ingenuity. Emma Dow, as Director, brought just such ingenuity to the task: a minor triumph of staging, with lots of delightful touches such as the footsteps on flight after flight of off-stage stairs of the tower which we heard before the Princess arrived at stage level.

In the cross-dressing comic Dame role Mark Woollard was a commanding presence, holding scene after scene together in a fine performance as both Dame and Nanny. This character’s baby-speak was a joyful satire on this common way of addressing babies, and the frequently out-of-tune singing simply reinforced the comic dimension. The baby’s OTT mobile cot was a witty prop.

This Panto does not play to the Shepperton Players strengths, which do not lie in singing.Luke Spencer as Musical Director played the keyboard with skill and oomph, ensured the five-person Chorus put up a good show, but could not overcome the weaknesses of most of the individual actors. Helpful Persons 1 and 2 – Ron Millinger and Karina Haywood - were wise – in fact helpful – when they intoned their songs in the style of Rex Harrison. They went on to straddle the set and audience with seeming ease, shrugged off frequent sackings, and did much to help things along. I especially enjoyed their spoof trumpets.

Keith Doyle played King Robert with the right combination of mighty frame and weak will, entering – with credit to the Costume Department – in pyjamas and a nightcap on top of which was a precariously perched crown, an instant pointer to his comic character. In fact all the costumes were excellent throughout.

It was clearly this King’s namesake King Robert the Bruce who led the author to introduce the menacing spider descending scarily upon the heads of the Court, and even managing – in an unscripted encore which especially delighted the children - to join in the dancing, just one element of the choreography by Gill Lambourn which helped many scenes of this production. This spider was the second non-speaking part which nearly stole a scene, the first being the opener dominated by the raucous crying of the new-born baby, the first sign that this new Princess was not going to be all sweetness and light.

No wonder mother Queen Cynthia could not cope, played convincingly here by Olwen Holme as a pathetic and lachrymose little thing, with more traces of the beggar woman she played in Sweeney Todd than of the beautiful young Lucy that beggar woman had once been.

Peter Smith as the Archbishop worried me. He seemed stiff and ill-at-ease on this stage. Was this a weak stage presence? Or was it a good reading of the stiffness often associated with senior Clerics, and how any Archbishop would feel ill-at-ease-thrust into such a crazy Court? Remembering Peter’s very different and confident performance as the wicked Judge in Sweeney Todd, I think it must be the latter.

The three good Fairy Godmothers could easily have been written and performed as much of a muchness. But just as the members of the Greek Chorus in The Trojan Women (also directed by Emma Dow) were given distinctive characters, so it is with the fairies, with acting constantly and strongly re-enforcing the distinctive identities pointed to in the script:Sophie Tame as Glynis, the comic one; Sally Penman as Blanche, the relatively normal one; andCaroline Millinger as the raw ‘apprentice’ one on whom in the end everything depends. Together they made a delightful trio.

Then Enter –with a dramatic flash and boom - the wicked one, Maultash, played with full venom by Stacey Gramlich, who deserved every boo she got (though not for her acting!). I cannot imagine a better performance in this role. Her every entrance was dramatic, most from the left as is the Panto tradition for all evil characters: sinister in both senses of the word.

And so to Princess Rose, the character the whole Panto is supposedly about. Sarah Oliver brought to this role just the right mix of headstrong petulance required, a girl much of whose attraction rested on her voice, one of a lascivious innocence reminiscent of the young Barbara Windsor. I feared for any man or Prince doomed to marry this spoilt darling.

In the second gender-swap required in Panto, Kirstyn Luton was amiable as the humble stable boy and modest when turned Prince, no more the standard heroic Prince than Rose was the standard perfect Princess. I worried about their future together!

The King’s final Proclamation that everyone was ‘going to live happily ever after’ would probably turn out to be as ineffectual as his constant sackings of the Helpful Persons, and I started to expect a sequel in which Maultash triumphs as Prince and Princess, and Archbishop and Nurse, are divorced. But then I remembered that this is all a fairy tale, and things like this do not happen except – of course - in real life.

What, then, did this production add up to, at least to an adult, or rather just this adult? I have enjoyed a lifetime of Pantomimes and am glad I came, though I did not leave the theatre with quite the delight of those key members of the audience, the kids. I knew that I had experienced a rather more than competent production, one better than most amateur dramatic societies would have attempted or managed, but this was not of the very best standard that I (a mere adult in the Panto world) have come to expect from the Shepperton Players.

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And a Nightingale Sang by C.P.Taylor: October 2009

Review by Colin Archer

This play has travelledfar in both place and time: set in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the 1940s, written and first produced there in 1973, transferred to London in 1979, and now, in 2009, scene-shifted to Hull and brought to Sunbury.  And it has travelledwell, thanks to the skill of the writing and the talents of the Shepperton Players.

The set made excellent use of the limited space available, centred as it was on a well-realised kitchen/dining room of the period with a half partitioned scullery and a corner which doubled up as a bedroom dressing table. Then the space in front of this set became many other things, and one of the delights is how characters could go out of the ‘door’ at the back of the kitchen only to re-appear from the wings after a few moments to arrive at a park bench, dance hall, air raid shelter, hotel room etc, the exact setting depending, as it does in Shakespeare, on the language of the play and the imagination of the audience.

The greatest initial impact came from the shallow, sentimental, superstitious, flighty, indecisive Joyce Stott (Helen Doyle), her of the incisive make-up and terrifying 1940s hairdo. “Stop being in a picture” says her sister, for this indeed is where Joyce seems to imagine herself, playing a part in some romantic Hollywood film. In the opening scenes she nearly stole the show, and although her role became less central as the play went on, her impressive range of facial expressions was there whenever called upon: utter terror at an air raid, recoil from the thought of sex with her husband, disgust at the offer of pink French knickers, fear when she thought she was pregnant, panic when she discovered that her husband was not the father. But the most memorable moment came when she learnt that her ‘perfect’ sister was going to live in sin, whereupon she stood, arms firmly folded, half looking away, with her face expressing in quick succession – and sometimes even simultaneously – dismay, wry amusement, unaccustomed primness, disapproval, moral superiority, mischief, and delight. Joyce is in many respects her mother’s daughter; just wait a couple of decades or so. For this actress, her face will be her stage fortune. Joyce remained the same from beginning to end, as did this excellent performance.

Joyce’s sister Helen (Emma Dow) has a more complex role.Firstly, it has a pivotal role: as narrator she holds the play together, while as central character she holds the Stott family together – for as long as she can. This required Emma to slip in and out of frame which she achieved smoothly (as she had as Cook/Narrator in The Canterbury Tales).Secondly, it called for a development in both the character and our reaction to her, and Emma paced theses changes with skill. The only element which might have been paced more convincingly was her lameness. Even allowing for “a bad day for my ankle” and the assertion that it worsened under stress, the degree of lameness varied rather more erratically than it should, especially in the opening scenes where there was little evidence for her family nickname ‘the cripple’.

Whereas Joyce ‘tries on’ emotions for fit Helen’s feelings are obviously authentic throughout and it is this which moves us. She clearly cares about all members of the Stott family, who she describes as “all sort of stuck there”, and is forever trying to smooth things over Her own low self-image is convincing: “I felt really funny, and awkward, and ugly, and a mess” she says as she sets out on her first sort-of-date with Norman, at which her body language is indeed gawky. But then came “he held my hand!” and she was suddenly a picture of surprised delight. Next came the astonished rapture when she found she could dance after all – and Helen warned our hearts.  Later, in a daring breach of frame,  she looked straight out at the audience with a mischievous grin as if to say “look what I’ve done” (and was that a wink?) as she told the hotel landlady “Yes, we’re married”. Emma made us care so much for Helen that when we discovered that Norman was far from the “straightforward chap” he called himself, I for one could have wept for her: another tiny and only too typical tragedy of war. This play has been called ‘bitter–sweet’, but at least this most bitter bit is finally made more palatable by Helen’s realisation “Now I know I deserve somebody worthwhile”.  Helen, unlike her sister, has gone on a journey of growth, one which Emma led us to follow: a performance of substance.

It is difficult to see how these two girls could be daughters of the same mother, Peggy Stott, played by Gill Lambourn (Was this really the same Gill Lambourn who played Hecuba in the Euripides? What a range!). Here is a neurotic and manic version of Nellie Bosworth played by Jean Boht in Carla Laine’s 1980s sitcom ‘Bread’. Peggy, not her husband, is supposedly the head of this household, but who even in their right minds could hold together such a disparate collection of individuals? All are lost in their individual obsessions: Joyce in her fantasy Hollywood, George in his piano and later his Communism, Grandfather in his dead whippet and precious cat. Certainly not someone with their own obsession, one even more extreme than the rest, a woman trapped in a form of religious mania. Here, like that of Helen, is a role requiring, and receiving in full measure, development over time.  Initially merely shrill, quirky, and mildly hilarious, Peggy’s mania grows with events: guilt with sinful thoughts when the Priest touches the back of her hand, guilt that it is her failure in due observance which caused the air raid, and the bomb which deliberately picked out her husband (or so she thought), and even the War itself. As the mania grew and took over, Gill paced the descent into panic, desperation, freneticism, and near-incoherence. A tour-de-force indeed.

Her much put-upon husband George (Peter Smith) impressed at first with his piano playing and then (when realisation slowly dawned) with his skilful miming of piano playing (though I wondered whether a slightly out-of-tune piano, or one with a few broken strings, might have fitted the place and time rather better (piano tuners and repairers being in short supply in the War – and expensive for a family like this). I would have wished his own obsession – with the piano – to have come over more clearly, and his later position on the Shop Stewards Committee to be more believable in such a mild-mannered man. But where this performance scored is when George officiously and comically tried out his Warden’s authority on poor grandfather with his cat. Here was a jobsworth of a man par excellence.

Grandfather Andie, played by Steve Lewis (one time Igor in Carpe Jugulum) as a lugubrious pessimist, was a delight from beginning to end, providing much of the light relief, a script which Steve delivered to our maximum delight.  “Dying is not as deadly as people think" he intoned. And his account of the deaf widow he planned to marry is, in the lightest sense of the word, wicked. Here was a comic counterpart to King Lear, both being passed from one reluctant sister to another and both asking ‘what is man?’ The tragic Lear, stripped of everything on the heath, concluded that man adds up to nothing, while the comic Andie came up with the priceless-seeming nonsense that “people are not human beings”, a statement which Steve uttered with solemn weight, and which, in the context of the total war then being waged, contains a nugget of wisdom worthy of Lear’s Fool.

This, then, is the Stott family into which the military intrude at their peril, and under the fluent direction of Diana Denton-Baker the cast convincingly realise the strange family dynamics in which typically members do not so much talk with each other asat, across, and against each other. Nobody seems to listen. The faulty communication reminds me at various points of Beckett, Pinter, and Alan Ayckbourn. This is a family which would probably, these days, be described as dysfunctional, though for better or worse they are all in it together for the Duration of the War (where there is a common enemy, albeit one often less troubling than folk among their own number and visiting soldiery). The play is punctuated by the progress of the actual War, by the popular songs of the day (well performed by the cast), and by that great wartime morale-booster ‘cups of tea’ the provision or promise of which are wittily highlighted by the cast. It is also punctuated by something which suggests that real affection exists, and that is the very telling and typically British denial of any such thing: any attempt at emotional closeness between members of the family or their guests is met again and again with the phrase ‘Don’t be daft’ – most effectively when George makes a move towards his wife. Here the acting underlines the deeper meaning of the words.

And so to the suitors, starting with Eric (Chris Pavlou). The script itself gives few clues to Eric’s inner world, but his actions themselves speak volumes about his motivation and character. Here is a man insensitive enough to get a ring ‘from a tart’ let alone to tell Joyce that’s where he got it. Chris showed this insensitivity; all the frustrated patience of a man desperate for a bit of sex before a lot of death; the judgement which could even begin to see Joyce as good wife material; the fecklessness which could lose a rifle (least of all in a ‘bog’); and the type of weakness which can only express anger in a torrent of uncouth language like that with which he eventually assaults Peggy’s ears. That was when we saw most of Eric, and Chris exploited this to the dramatic full.

Howard Tame(remembered as Verence II in Carpe Jugulum) played the other suitor Norman with a marvellous Brummie accent to contrast with the Yorkshire accents which other members of the cast managed more successfully than they might have the original Geordie). He brought an open face which made Helen – and probably us – believe his story of being a straightforward sort of bloke, albeit none too bright. His later prevarication and confessions came over as a sign not so much of evil intent but of weakness at a time of quick passions, imagined romances, and painful betrayals. This was an intelligent and measured performance. Poor Helen.

All the performances were enhanced with good costumes and props courtesy of Pat Champion, Chantal Suppanee and Pauline Hutton and also with excellent lighting and sound from Richard Smith and Jonathan Millinger.

Overall, the play itself is brilliant, not least of all how it undercuts and domesticates aspects of the War with some well-realised moments of black humour such as the whistle of a bomb turning out to be the whistle of the scullery kettle, George’s playing of the Last Post not on a bugle but on a mouth organ,  the use of a lifesaving baby respirator for a cat, and Norman’s anguished question following his admission that he was married only to be met with Helen’s pragmatic ‘I’ve brought some ginger beer’. Shepperton Players brought to this play a performance of a high standard under a direction which was fine both in overall structure and in tiny detail (such as changing the Geordie ‘netty’ to the common ‘bog’).  Well done all round.

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Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Christopher Bond

In Sweeney Todd we enter a dark Dickensian world of corruption and human degradation, a society to which one could rightly apply the ancient Latin tag Canis Canem Edit / Dog Eat Dog, although here we move up the food chain to Man Eat Man – simply turning the metaphorical into the literal.

Once again Shepperton Players bravely chose a difficult play, and once again showed the number of skilful actors they can draw on.

Sally Penman made an irredeemably evil but utterly believable Mrs Lovett, a cockney after your own heart - if only she could pop it into one of her meat pies. With an impassive face she still managed to impart a deep chill to the words “You’re so lovely I could eat you up”. She was more the villain - the ‘Demon’ even - than Sweeney Todd, which is exactly what is required.

Olwen Holme as the Beggar Woman – eventually revealed as Lucy – wheedled away convincingly as she sought “alms for a poor unfortunate woman”, backing away fearfully every time her appeals were rejected. A delightful feature was the endless hand tremor induced no doubt by her years of incarceration in the Bedlam-like Asylum.

Robert Hardy successfully doubled-up – or rather trebled up – in sharply contrasting roles, none more impressive than that of Jonas Fogg as the keeper of the Asylum once used to house Lucy and now housing daughter Johanna. His own insanity was revealed bit by bit at breakneck speed. His well-delivered justification that the only true madness is to lock up people in Asylums gave a dimension of social satire to an already complex play.

Belinda Doyle’s Johanna was a pure delight, every inch the wronged maiden, full of grace, and with the singing voice of an Angel. Her rejection of her Ward’s lascivious advances was pure melodrama both in the script she was given and the way she spoke the words “The grave shall rather have my maidenhead then marry you.” Belinda’s range was hugely evident when she froze in horror, her shoulders hunched up in tension, as she looked upon the bodies of the couple we knew to be her parents.

Philip L Milne made Anthony, who is already marked as a hero by having saved the Barber’s life at sea, went on to make just the fresh-faced clean-living worldly-experienced suitor for such an innocent maiden. They made a fine pair indeed.

Peter Smith made a suitably cynical, self-seeking and villainous Judge, Joanna’s Ward and wouldbe seducer. The self-knowledge which led to his self-flagellation was one of many pointers that this play is very much more than Victorian Melodrama: we could not envisage Squire Corder of the archetypal Victorian melodrama Maria Marten or Murder on the Old Red Barn engaging in such an activity. Having made the point so forcefully, it is a pity that Peter took quite so long to dress himself again when this might have been done off-stage.

The Judge’s side-kick the bumptious Beadle was presented by Geoff Buckingham with just the right degrees of unsavoury body and manner: he made me half-believe that if I was nearer to the stage than Row F he would smell even worse than the human remains in Mrs Lovett’s basement, a stench which he was sent to investigate.

In Alfredo Pirelli (Clive Tibbits) we were back with pure melodrama: here, if anywhere, was the classic moustache-twirling black-hearted male villain, a figure of unmitigated evil, here attempting blackmail. I was not at all sorry to have him filling meat pies.

Sally Warner as his assistant Tobias, later assistant to Mrs Lovett, has a tricky role, described elsewhere as somewhat slow-witted but required by the part to act as a suitable applicant for any‘Smart Lad Wanted’ advert, moving around with alacrity. In an interesting and good piece of casting, Sally does the latter well, and I suppose we can’t expect to see whether Tobias’s mind is moving at a similar pace.

The production was backed up by a clever set, including a convincing cabin trunk placed handily for bodies (one which closed with a loud bang to provide original pieces of punctuation), and an ingenious barber’s chair which could carry bodies off at an impressive speed. I must also mention the music by Steve Lewis which established the atmosphere and, at the opening of Act II, tightened the tension by one more notch.

At the start of this review I suggested that Sweeney Todd is a difficult play – a deceptively difficult perhaps. It is ultimately in the hands of the Director and of the actor playing Sweeney Todd (both in this case James Wallis) that any production stands or falls. This production did neither. It came close, but stumbled. There are two big challenges to be met and surmounted to totally succeed.

The first is to bring out fully that this play has greater depth than a Victorian Melodrama. This was certainly recognised in this production, though not brought out to a sufficient degree. The play is, in many ways, like a late Elizabethan/early Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, with roots less in Maria Martin than in Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy. It contains some of the sine qua non of that old genre, including several hints of a ghost starting with the Beggar Woman’s shocked half recognition of Sweeney “Your face!” and Mrs Lovett’s opening reaction “Are you a ghost?” And am I right in detecting in the shaving and tooth-pulling contest the relics of the usual play-within-a play? Most importantly, Sweeney Todd, despite his unforgivable actions, has a clear and understandable motive: he has been massively wronged, “I will be revenged” he declares, and “I will have blood”, echoing Kyd’s Hieronimo’s “Naught but blood will satisfy my woes” (III.7). While Mrs Lovett would, no doubt, happily continue using an endless supplies of human meat, Sweeney is not – despite the play’s subtitle - a pure ‘Demon’. He would be content simply to revenge himself by taking the life of the evil Judge who stole and – he believes – killed his lovely young wife. Seeing the Judge coming he says “One more and my work is done.” He will use Mrs Lovett to dispose of the evidence of his misdeeds, but holds her in contempt: there was to be no seaside retirement with that woman. As the brilliant Miller in The Canterbury Tales James Wallis would no doubt have made first-rate flour for the crusts of Mrs Lovett’s pies, but in the career move as the provider of meat to fill those pies he failed to reach the same heights. James filled the stage, albeit rather stiffly, and performed the words themselves well enough, but he did not, until the very late stages of the play, demonstrate the range of emotions – and above all of body language – required for us to feel sufficient empathy for the fellow, something which is surely required.

The second challenge arises from the number and frequency of scene-changes in this play. Many of these were too slow; some rather noisy and clumsy; one, early in Act II, maybe in a trick of the lighting, allowed us to see through the white screen, albeit in shadowy form, the frantic efforts of the stage hands: very distracting from the scene being played out in front of the screen. Too often the impetus of the play was lost. We needed crisper scene-changes. I don’t know how this might be achieved which is why I am merely a lower-case critic, not a Capital Director! I do wonder about doubling up of the title character and the Director. Maybe each needed to observe the other’s work independently.

This production, then, for all its many merits, did not in the end quite attain the very high standard I have come to expect from the Shepperton Players.

One final good point: Gillian Lambourn as prompt was either redundant or extremely skilful in her whispering. In either case, Shepperton Players come out well.

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Canterbury Tales : Chaucer made modern by Phil Woods and Michael Bogdanov: February 2009

Review by Colin Archer

I doubt if Shepperton Players have ever given better value for money. Director Gill Lambourn opened with an inspired piece of casting in which Emma Dow became simultaneously MC and Cook. This role gave shape to the whole evening from the opening, through the constant verbal tussles with the churlish Miller (James Wallis) - who sat in the audience  larger then life and  twice as  uncouth - to the Finale.

Music was provided by the delightful five-piece Medieval Medlers who made modern instruments sound remarkably Fourteenth Century. The lighting in the hands of Richard Smith also made a subtle but significant contribution to the whole.

The Knight’s  Tale is the longest, and most difficult to stage with conviction. Both Howard Tame (as Palamon) and Alistair Ross (Arcite)  showed their dramatic range in the Pardoners Tale and the Franklin’s Tale. But while both gave creditable accounts in their initial roles as warring nobles in the Knight’s Tale, neither was at his convincing best in this tale of chivalry.

We were, however, instantly rewarded with one of the highlights of the evening, the Nun Priest’s Tale introduced by Doris Neville-Davies in black habit, every inch the Nun. From first cockcrow, Chris Stotesbury (briefly released from his ‘cello) made a magnificent preening cockerel Chanticlere, and Sally Warner a superb chicken Pertilote. Their every movement from jerking necks to scrabbling feet, were pure poultry. In this they were joined by equally able chicks, and the movement of the chicks about the farmyard was well choreographed. James Wallis reappeared transmuted into the lethal sweet-talking Fox. Sally Parker was the hapless Farmer’s Wife making some skilful dramatic stage tumbles (which would not, I am sure, account for this being her only appearance of the evening). Follow that!

What followed was the Tale related by The Pardoner, now updated to Social Worker. At the heart of the tale were Tom, Dick, and Harry -  roles in which the erstwhile Palamon and Arcite seemed very much more at home, being joined by young Nick Hampshire. Diana Denton-Baker as the Old Lady provided one of the excellent cameo performances of the evening (others including Marion Millinger as the Miller’s Wife and Olwen Holme as the Guru).

As the narrator in the Reeve’s Tale, Eric Champion, previously the Knight’s Jailor and later Carpenter John, revealed both his lean legs and his strong stage presence to good effect. Howard Tame as student John, looking much like Rupert the Bear on a ripping wheeze, was happily joined again by Nick Hampshire as fellow student Alan. Together they gave a good account both as seeming innocents abroad and later as scheming thieves after more than the Miller’s corn.  As the Miller’s wife  and  daughter, Marion Millinger and  Robyn Watts were suitably sexy but grounded, with  nice singing voices and Marion’s face at key points was brilliantly expressive. Here, and in other Tales, we enjoyed the imaginative upright beds occupied by less than upright folk.

After an interval, we returned with the Merchant’s Tale where Peter Smith excelled himself as a gormless, bumbling, desperately keep-fitting, old man, and was ably aided and abetted by  Roland Fahey (a competent future King) as his incompetent friend Justinus. Caroline Millinger convinced both as the innocuous virgin and the devious adulterer, with a slipperiness enough to worry any male. Sally Penman was a delightful Proserpine always  having the upper hand over her  amusingly grumpy king.

Old friends from many previous tales soon returned in fresh roles, joined now by Helen Warner as  Dorigen in the Franklyn’s Tale: Shepperton Players clearly has strength in depth Diana Denton-Baker made a fine worldly-wise Wife of Bath, with Robert Hardy, Knight from the opening Tale, retuning as another Knight. The magical transformation of the Hag (well acted by Cathy Dunn) into a young beauty (Caroline Millinger) was a well-managed coup de theatre.

The ‘mucky’ Miller’s Tale lived up to expectations, with an excruciatingly believable red-hot poker to punish the sins of the flesh. Sophie Hellicar obviously revelled in the role of the “outgoing” wife always on the lookout for a bit of fun and the multitalented Nick Hampshire demonstrated a fine singing voice.  This was an hilarious fitting near-ending to the evening’s entertainment saving for the Cook’s taking centre stage and the whole cast receiving well-deserved applause.

This was a decisive ending, and I would have wished more of the stories to have reached clearer minor endings; too often there was an awkward pause both for actors and audience while the latter became sure it was time to applaud.

Overall, this was another tremendous success for both Gill Lambourn and the whole cast. Chaucer would have been proud of them.

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Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett: October 2008

Brief Synopsis

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are among the funniest, cleverest, and best loved in modern literature. Now award winning writer Stephen Briggs has brought them to life for the stage. If you aren’t familiar with the novels don’t worry, just think Monty Python meets The Adams Family and get ready to laugh. In Carpe Jugulum the politically aware witches are called upon to defend the kingdom of Lancre from a family of new-age vampires. It begins on a joyous occasion when the progressive King Verence has invited various dignitaries to attend the christening of the royal baby. Unfortunately, Granny Weatherwax’s invitation has gone missing and when you invite vampires in they’re not inclined to leave quietly. Can the power of Lancre’s witches defeat vampires who aren’t afraid of losing their socks? Can the inner, thinner voice of Agnes Nitt make herself heard? Will Igor’s self-surgery leave you in stitches? Can the novice Omnian priest do anything useful at all? Find out as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comes to Sunbury.

Review by Colin Archer

I came to this play expecting to be disappointed. Discworld is an acquired taste, one which I had failed to acquire. Then I read that the running time of the play was two-and-a-half hours, and doubted whether I, or many of the audience, could sustain attention.

I was so wrong. I left the theatre at 11pm delighted by the whole riveting experience.

The play opens to a skilful, solid, and convincing set designed by Ron Millinger which provides six main spaces which easily accommodate the fifteen locations specified in the text. I loved some of the witty touches, especially the familiar black-and-yellow cover of the ‘Dummies Guide to Witchcraft’.

Full marks also go to those responsible for the many props (the Doyle family), for special effects (Pat Langley), slick lighting changes (Jonathan Millinger and Richard Smith) and for sound (Stephen Millinger) for the many dead-on-cue deliveries.

Olwen Home directed at a flowing pace which ensured that we did get away by 11pm, but not too fast for us to miss some of the wit.

Not one of the 21 actors was less than competent, and most were good.

In this production it was some of the smaller parts which were among those performed most memorably: Roland Fahey as The Old Count, Hugh Thomson as Death, Keith Doyle as The Border Troll, and the delightful method-acting of Sally Warner as that ultimate mongrel, Scraps.

Turning to more substantial parts, special mention must be made of Caroline Millinger as Perdita the thin witch trapped inside Agnes Nitt, the large one played by Robyn Watts. Robyn was a star, but even she was at times outshone by her alter ego who followed her faithfully everywhere, sometimes leaning, languid, bored, examining her fingernails, at other times passionately angry as Agnes fell under a vampire spell.

Among the vampires I enjoyed the quiet menace of Ron Millinger’s Count and Sue Dye’s loving but truly chilling wife and mother, but was especially impressed by the “children“ - Vlad, played by Philip L Milne as  the spoilt-brat product of a very  minor English Public School, and the virulent blood-lusting Lacrimosa played by Belinda Doyle who reminded me of a very minor Royal.

Turning back to the Witches, Nanny Ogg, played by Lorna Doyle in the longest Witch part, was the best. Awkward, determined, defiant, down-to-earth, she exploited to the full the language given to her.  It wasn’t just the fact that we never knew what she would dig out next from her voluminous knickers that held our attention at all times.

Sally Penman - who gave a nice performance as the former Witch now Queen - had a difficult role.  Somehow she had to persuade us that she was now every bit a Queen (in which she succeeded), but also that she was until recently a full-bloodied Witch (which we found hard to believe)

Even more difficult was the Joy McQuade part as Granny Weatherwax, a pivotal role in the whole story-line.  She appeared very much the witch, and gave the part a sensitive reading.

Two other Major parts were played triumphantly:

One, Steve Lewis was a comic masterpiece as Igor, the stereotypical hunchback servant from all the old black-and-white Vampire B-movies, a vampire longing to go back to the old days of dungeons, coffins and cobwebs.

The other, Robert Hardy as the Quite Reverend Mightily Oats, who reminded one of Derek Nimmo, brought out all the satire on religion contained in this play, here relocated in a religion called Omnianism . We have the constant schisms, the dietary rules, and the problems of translating ancient languages.

The cast variously performed well the occasional filmic freeze-frames, and the Director managed well that terrifying stage-direction “a mob enters”.

The length of the play did not in the end put an undue strain on the audience, but it did so on some of the cast, and towards the end the busiest person was, sadly but efficiently, Gill Lambourn as Prompt, the need for whose services did at times interrupt the flow.

Ultimately, though, it is not much more than a knock-about menace-filled comedy, a good one, and one of which Shepperton Players gave a good account.

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What the butler saw by Joe Orton: July 2008

Review by Stephen Macvicar

Synopsis

The chase is on, and libidos run rampant, in this breakneck comedy of licensed insanity. From the moment when Dr Prentice - a psychoanalyst interviewing a prospective secretary - instructs her to undress, his world is destined to change forever. The plot of ‘What the Butler Saw’ contains enough twists and turns, mishaps and changes of fortune, coincidences and lunatic logic to furnish three or four conventional comedies.

Dr Prentice's increasingly desperate and ultimately doomed attempts to cover up his indiscretions can only lead him into trouble… and it is difficult to know who will get him first - the government inspector, his wife or a very confused policeman (in a dress). Poor Geraldine and Nicholas are just caught in the middle - sometimes in each others clothes, and sometimes without many clothes at all.

Hailed as a modern comedy every bit as good as Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Orton's play is regularly produced, read and studied. ‘What the Butler Saw’ was Orton's final play before his tragic death in 1967, at the height of his career.

Overview (for NODA London Magazine)

The cast of this SP production gave some nice performances on the night I attended and the set was once again well concepted. Maybe it is me but I just don’t find this play sufficiently funny. I enjoy a good farce but some of the situations are painful – the scene with the roses for instance. Differences in the measurements of the cast meant that changing costumes convincingly just wasn’t possible.

The stage of the Riverside Arts Centre was transformed into the psychiatrist surgery of Dr Prentice. The room was tastefully decorated in yellow with table and chairs, bed, three doors for entrances and exits and of course 60’s music to give us a flavour of the period.

What the Butler Saw by the controversial Joe Orton strikes me as a potentially funny play if performed exquisitely. Whilst this production entertained, it never really tickled as farces should. In reality, I don’t blame in any way your Director Steve Lewis, there are some extremely awkward situations in the play which require timing and fantastic acting ability to be even remotely convincing. I refer particularly to the roses and the praying etc which were at best awkward.

Pace is so important in a play of this nature. It is keeping the pace and intensity going for two hours which will ultimately build the humour for the cast of six. Whilst the endeavour was in abundance, the intensity was lacking in places.

A mere forty years on, this play is already looking dated in terms of attitudes and slapstick humour. As Steve mentions in his Director’s Notes, the gags that were common place then would now be deemed offensive, sexist, prejudiced, ageist and many other derogatives. Slapstick humour is difficult to deliver well and that is where the pace, the time and the delivery are so crucial.

Visual comedy was very much to the fore in this production. Scantilly clant ladies, a cross dressing bellboy and a policeman caught with his trousers down. The differences in size among the cast made costume changes largely unconvincing but it didn’t really matter as the situations they found themselves in were suitably preposterous.
 
I have written a few notes on the cast members who were all hard working (in programme order);
 
Dr Prentice – Crispin Shingler – I thought Crispin gave a sound performance as the agitated doctor who was getting pulled around from pillar to post. Perhaps a slight tendency to underplay his dialogue – there were times when I really wanted him to lose it - but I can understand why Crispin didn’t given the absurdity of his situation. Crispin reminded me of the successful actor Philip Franks best known as ‘Charlie’ from ‘The Darling Buds of May’.

Geraldine Barclay – Sally Penman – A fresh face for the society - Sally was convincing as the potential receptionist who, in a rather obscure situation, is asked to undress behind a screen. It can’t be easy spending most of the performance scantily clad but Sally survived the experience.
 
Mrs Prentice – Katherine Lewis – This was a nice role for Katherine to play if a little bit bitchy but it gave her a chance to display her pins.

Nicholas Beckett – Phil Milne – Self-respect goes right out of the window in comedies and in particular farces. Phil got the raw end of the stick by putting on a women’s dress but it did give some hilarity.

Dr Rance – Steve Lewis – Steve has a nice stage manner and his bureaucratic character was confusing the matter more than we could cope with.

Sergeant Match – James Wallis – James was another new face as the bumbling policeman. I look forward to seeing him in future roles.

Thanks to Steve Lewis for pulling together an entertaining evening despite what you were up against in terms of content and hopefully your cast will have been able to get some personal artistic success out of the show.

Kindest Regards

Stephen Macvicar

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