Bedroom Farce

This was my first official visit to this group as a representative of Noda, although I have seen many of their productions in the past.

Bedroom farce was written by Alan Ayckbourn in 1975. The action takes place in the bedrooms of three married couples during one long night. They are all linked by a fourth married couple whose miserable dysfunctional marriage affects the other three couple’s relationships.

With three separate bedroom scenes, the set was well designed to make maximum use of the space on the Barrington’s fairly large stage. I have to save it looked superb and worked very.

The excellent well balanced cast all gave a fine performances, it was very well directed, and it was very funny, with lots of laughter throughout from the very appreciative capacity audience.  Whilst all the cast were excellent I did think that Steve Hawker and Dawn Hollington, playing the dysfunctional couple, Trever and Susannah were both outstanding.

For a farce too work well it needs fast snappy delivery. Personally I felt that a couple of times the pace did drop as the cast seemed to struggle for their lines. I later discovered that there had been several late changes to the cast due to illness, so I think that the slight lapses were understandable and great credit must be given to the late replacements for doing such an excellent job.

It can never be easy to light a stage as three separate rooms, a problem that I noted during in this play, and found slightly distracting, was black shadows on the back wall of the set. The was no doubt the result of having to use the front of house lighting rails to light the third bedroom that was set towards the rear of the stage.

Overall I thought that this was an excellent production of a very high standard that was very enjoyable.

It was a pleasure to see that Ferndown Drama group can attract a capacity audience, Extra seating had to be put out shortly before curtain up. I am sure that they all enjoyed the play as much as I did. You can’t beat an evening of laughter to brighten up a cold January night.

Congratulations to all concerned, I look forward to the next time.

 

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