A Fete Worse Than Death

In this murder mystery/comedy Actor Ray Martin is opening the village fete, playing on his fame as TV's Inspector Brady. Little does he know that ambition, infidelity and marrow envy will lead to murder, and he'll be left to solve it - without a script! 

Swavesey RADSOC set the village fete theme by decking out the foyer with various stalls and games generally seen at a village fete.  The ‘Splat the Rat’ was causing great hilarity and there were many ways to ‘win’ on raffles, tombolas etc. plus, of course, tea and cakes were readily available if you didn’t want to visit the ‘beer tent’.  So the scene was well set before we entered the auditorium.

The scenery was excellent with a huge marquee complete with bunting depicting the competition tent set with various tables.  The props were right and the giant marrow impressive.  Lighting and sound were good, I particularly liked the public address system and the costumes were appropriate for each character.

The script was good, not Shakespeare but taken for what it was it flowed well and was quite humorous.  Malcolm (John Pickering) contender for Thornton's Biggest Marrow and new chairman of the village fete committee, was murdered about half-way through Act One and the range of suspects for his murder was fairly wide.  There was Nigel (Matt Isham) an historical re-enacter, who spent all the play in full Viking regalia, Rev Bev (Di Chapman) a rather un-Christian vicar and owner of the giant marrow.   Then we had Bunny (Tessa Kilvington-Shaw), Malcolm's wife, fed up with taking second place to a marrow so having an affair with Nigel and Trish (Emily Marshall) the officious fete organiser, upset at being passed over for committee chairman. The only one not under suspicion is Jez (Chessie Sharman), a teenage photographer with great ambitions. Enter Ray Martin (Martin Avery) an actor, famous for playing TV's 'Inspector Brady' to open the fete and whom the village spinster Miss Parmenter (well played by Diana Young), who has both a fondness for TV detectives and trouble distinguishing TV from real life, coerces into ‘solving’ Malcolm’s murder

Phil Bailey made his directorial debut with this production and he will have learned first hand the trials and tribulations this particular role brings.  In the main he did a reasonable job, there was little or no masking but groupings could have been better. Young Jez could have been encouraged to make proper and more natural use of her camera.  Much could have been made of her role if she had made herself a nuisance taking ‘candid’ shots and getting in people’s faces more.  

I saw the first night of a two night run and have to be perfectly honest and say at times it felt like a rehearsal.  Not many of the cast got away without one or more prompts and at one point the audience sat and waited for long seconds before dialogue was picked up and things moved on again.  However good a director is, he/she can’t learn the lines for everyone.  That is an actor’s responsibility.  However, there were flashes of what this cast could do and at times things went along swimmingly and with a bit more pace and better cue bite they could have got many more laughs with this script than they ultimately managed.

Next up for Swavesey RADSOC is their annual pantomime Puss in Boots in February followed by Wind in the Willows, adapted by society member Matthew Isham, later in the Spring.

 

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