A Play Festival That Goes Wrong

Many thanks to Fylde Coast Players for inviting me along to see their production of A Play Festival That Goes Wrong, on Thursday 4th August 2022. This piece was a send up of 5 short plays, all played badly with lots of mishaps and mayhem thrown in, to make a thoroughly enjoyable piece and entertaining evening of theatre.

The show was directed by Heather Cartmell who pulled together 5 strong individual snippets from the selection of shows, which were all well rehearsed and polished, so that all the built in mishaps felt authentic. Each of the different plays had a different style, from the film noir style of Noel Howard’s Streugh, musical opera style of Il Fornicazione, to Shakespearian style of Julius and Cleopatara. She chose to have the actors muliroling throughout the production and brought out so great characterisation from them. Underpinning the entire production, she added a compare style narrator, which again was au fait with the rest of the production and seamlessly held it together, adding jokes and memories to celebrated the 75 years the players have been together.

Set design, lighting, costumes and props were of an equally good standard, and highlighting the send up nature of the show. I found the set design of the first and second plays being the same, but in reverse absolutely genius. The forth play with the collapsing table legs was also hilarious and a particularly notable as the direction was constructed in such away to avert attention away from the next table leg to fall.

As there were so many characters brought about, I’ve decided to provide an overview of the wholistic overview of the performances and call out a few notable stand outs for this review.

Overall, this was a very strong ensemble piece, with different actors taking the lead and support roles in the different plays. All characters developed were fit to the style of both the contextualised play and the out of character moments brought about in the mishaps. There was great unity between the entire cast and all involved looked at ease on the stage.

Andy Cooke was a delight to watch in all pieces he appeared and to each piece he brought strong characterisations. My favourite of his performances was the detective piece, in which the plot span in a circle with the script, each time the scenes repeated used an alternate subtext, each one dwindling in patience, with the scene that was obviously going nowhere. Very solid performance throughout, well done.

Paul Lomax brought out a highly energised performance to the sections he was in. Each character very eccentric, but all different and suitably detailed. Notably for me was his Merry Huntsman in the opera piece, his animated Oliver D’Arcy was hilarious, and brought out some amazing wit in the Julius and Cleopatara piece.

Andrea Cave looked utterly glamorous and Lavina and brought some real class to this role. Her take on Cleopatara was equally as strong.

I loved the compere which underpinned the show, undertaken by Maureen Calveley. I couldn’t tell if this was actually au fait to Maureen, or a character she had devised, either way it was delivered impacably and added continuity and lots of humour to the show.

A very well done to all cast, creative and crew for this production. I was literally belly laughing throughout. I am looking forward to seeing more from the Fylde Coast Players.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.