Cafe Brosse

Making a successful farce requires a well-directed and thought-out production with an excellent, confident cast with slick actions and dialogue. This production ticked all the boxes. 

George and Seraphine run a café in a French town. Seraphine is fed-up with the constant cleaning,cooking and keeping the café looking its best. She wants a change. The town is very boring and sells nothing but brushes. The café cupboard appears to have most of them and they constantly fall out every time the door is opened. George has a mistress, Yvette, who lives a rather boring life in a leaky apartment and with nothing much to do other than look beautiful and glamorous.    Yvette, of course, would also like a change. An easy solution to the problem is suggested by George’s friend, Aramis, which is for the ladies to change places. Unfortunately, Yvette is not very good at being a housewife or running the café, all            of which she finds boring. The café keeps on being visited by two “foreigners” who communicate either by mime, or in their own country’s language, which no-one can identify. On top of all this, George’s Aunt Marie turns up thinking that Yvette          is Seraphine and does nothing but criticize Yvette for her lack of culinary skills.

A regular visitor to the café is larger-than-life Raymond who always appears to have drunk too much vino and who just makes things worse. Seraphine is not happy with her new lifestyle and decides to return home with her and Yvette agreeing      that they were better off as they were. Aramis suggests that perhaps it is George who is causing the problems and it would be better if he left and the ladies found a new man.  Poor Aramis didn’t think this one through as he was the one who          was left to look after the ladies.

Each of these characters was well-defined and the cast played their roles convincingly. The pace of the dialogue and diction was very good. 

John Varlow took on the challenging role of George with a huge amount of dialogue and very rarely left the stage. Heather Boulby as Seraphine was fiery and quick tempered. John and Heather gave excellent performances                                     and were well paired.

At the last minute, David Smith, after learning all of his lines was unfortunately unable to perform as Aramis and the role was taken over by Karen Kirkup. Karen ensured that the audience knew this was a male role                                                          She dressed accordingly, had her hair cut into a style best suited for the role and even  the script in her hand did not prevent her giving a first-class performance. 

Another great performance was from Lou Hardy as Yvette who changed her moods to suit each situation - vivacious one minute and sulky the next. All with lovely facial expressions and perfect outfits. 

Taking the roles of the foreigners were Anna-Marie Fearnley as Frida and Amanda Gill as Madga. Their body language, facial expression and the unknown language were amazing and as time goes on they accumulate more                                    and  more brushes of one type or another. One of many great comedy scenes we see is that of the ladies sat outside the café and looking through the glass door eating a meal. It was hilarious and the timing was perfect.                                              These ladies were excellent in these roles..

Dave Cockerham played the loudmouth and drunk, Raymond. Playing a drunk can easily get out of hand but Dave’s comic timing and characterisation was spot on. Likewise, Jane Fellows was perfect as the interfering Aunt Marie                      , always criticizing poor Yvette. Both played their characters really well.

It is truly amazing that so much can be accomplished on a small stage but Emley Drama Group achieve this every time. The set, props, lighting and sound all worked very well and the costumes suited the characters exactly.

Again, congratulations to Karen, the cast and everyone involved in making this a very good production. Thank you to everyone for providing us with a thoroughly entertaining evening and making all of us laugh                                                        .Thank you for the invite and the lovely warm welcome. It was great to see you all again on the stage after such a long absence. 

 

 

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