My final play for January sees me back at the Rose Theatre in Kidderminster with the Nonentities production of one of the Farndale Avenue Dramatic Society plays. The Nonentities at The Rose Theatre are mostly responsible for getting me into theatre after I saw their wonderful Jeeves and Wooster a few years ago and I try not to miss any of their plays if I can help it. Heavy snow forced me to miss one of their productions last year and I am still irked about it now.
The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society are a series of 10 plays written by Walter Zerlin Jr. and David McGillivray, performed in the 1970's and 80's. They focus on various famous plays or genres being performed by a local women's amateur dramatic group, but things don't always go according to the script. Even when the script is onstage. Other plays in the series feature Christmas Carol, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Shakespeare's Macbeth. I had seen the Farndale Macbeth before and I have to say I wasn't that impressed. Aside from the sets facing backwards and the onstage theatre critic who keeps wondering off, the jokes weren't that funny. However I'm glad I did decide to give the Farndale ladies another chance as this one was far better.
As the title suggests the Farndale Society have chosen to perform a typical 1960's type French Farce, with mistresses, mistaken identity, wives and lovers hidden in cupboards and under tables. Of course with missed cues, forgotten lines, missing props, falling down sets, poor lighting and sound crew, nothing goes to plan for the Society. If you've ever seen The Play Goes Wrong or their recent TV series The Goes Wrong Show, you'll have an idea what to expect. It should be noted though the these Farndale plays were written well in advance of those, and are surely the inspiration for the multi award winning Mischief Theatre productions.
The Rose Theatre often create well designed and built sets and this set was no different. Sound and Light crew are always excellent and must have had a tough job to get it wrong tonight, on purpose.
One of the hardest things to do on stage is to act badly on purpose. Another is to be funny on stage. I have seen amateur productions in the past well they struggle with comic timing and so a lot of jokes don't get laughs. It shows how good the whole cast were that they could pull this off and that the audience were laughing from the get go. In particular Joan Wakeman, who I have seen in many Nonentities plays, was excellent at seeming like a terrible actor. Her character has to read from a script from most of the play, and seem like she's uneasy on stage, and Joan gave us a great performance once again. Louise Fulwell and Steven Bougourd had some very tricky lines to learn and I'm sure the learning and rehearsal process must have been very difficult. With all the character names rhyming in the play, added to the confusion of wives, husbands, ex-wives, ex-husbands, I am amazed how they kept everything going. Added to all that Louise Fulwell has to interact with the audience and still managed to remember everything. Hannah Tolley and Amy Cooper were also both excellent, having to deal with stunts and entering and exiting the stage many times a minute it seemed. Must have took some admirable direction by Martin Salter to keep everything flowing smoothly.
All in all another triumph for the Nonentities at The Rose Theatre. There next production is a change of direction as they are doing William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. I've already seen some of the cast members though and I am sure it will be another great production.
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