Caramba's Revenge

This comedy by William Norfolk is one I must confess to having had no knowledge of prior to my attendance at the super Blackburn Arts Club in Gibraltar Street, and therefore approaching the evening's performance with a completely open mind was a relatively easy task, affording your humble reviewer the opportunity to revel in the evening's entertainment without any preconceptions or having the slightest idea what to expect. That it was such an entertaining evening is a testament to everyone involved in the production and once again, demonstrated both the diverse range of Blackburn Arts Club's output and their unwavering commitment to bringing live entertainment of the highest order to the area on a regular basis.

The play is a gleefully amoral black comedy which tells the story of a household of 'sweet little old ladies' who are anything but sweet - and, as the actors took their bow at the end of the show in a masterstroke of a final reveal, it turned out that they were performed by ladies who were far from old too! Lottie, Marge and Doris have an ingenious way of managing their finances which involves the setting up of a worker's cooperative system; the pooling of pension books; cheerful discussions of who to murder next over their afternoon tea and a carefree attitude towards the disposal of the bodies afterwards. The whole play was bracing in its amorality and all the more enjoyable for it: here was a comedy which seemed to channel elements of 'Arsenic and Old Lace', filtered through dialogue which was two parts Roy Clarke to one part Joe Orton, while at the same time being wholly original in its slightly surreal freshness. A world was conjured up which was just ever so slightly off-kilter, a subtle perversion of our recognisable everyday experience shot through with the darkest of black humour. The decision to set the play in the 1980s was a great idea as the audience could perhaps ruminate on how far the play was a comment on that most (supposedly) rapacious and self-centred of decades, where the Thatcherite battle cry of 'survival of the fittest' has been taken to its nakedly amoral conclusion by the most unlikely collection of blue-rinsed Machiavellis. This deliriously wonky production had lots to say, humour aplenty and a superb set of performances from a cast at the top of their game, marshalled by a director who had obviously thought long and hard about how best to get the most from the play.

Ostensible gang leader Lottie - a Raymond Chandler manque, whose work in progress 'Baby, Here's Your Shroud' provides a comic thread throughout the play - was played with great skill by Rachel Nolan who captured the character as one might pin a butterfly into a collectors cabinet after having first bathed it in chloroform. Never overplaying the character, letting the humour of her words and deeds speak for themselves, never once slipping out of character, never overdoing things or playing deliberately for cheap laughs and faultlessly essaying the physical demeanour of a lady over twice her age, she gave a superb performance. Marge - ruler of the cooperative kitchen and queen of the evening class - was also brought to life with great flair by Sarah Nolan: who knew Hyacinth Bucket had a great aunt somewhere with a carefree outlook on murder and pension book fraud, along with a penchant for handing round stale Garibaldis?! Another marvellous characterisation. The unfortunate Doris - bibulous pilferer of cooperative funds to feed her love of rum and blackcurrant - was gloriously brought to life by Charlotte McConnell in what has to be the comic performance of the year so far for me. Playing 'drunk' is always a challenge for any performer but the ease with which Charlotte gently nudged her comic performance out into the audience, rather than blasting us with over the top stage business, was a master class in the art: every physical movement, facial tic and cheerful chuckle was perfection. Her drunken slump at the bottom of the stairs was delightfully thrown away and when a performer can afford to make a quiet symphony out of the mere act of falling over behind a half closed door, an audience knows it is in the company of greatness. It seemed a shame that Doris couldn't make it to Act Two but then the others had designs on her pension book and so she had to go...

When a potential fly in the ointment from Down Under arrives in the form of Violet's granddaughter Ronnie (complete with a Kylie Minogue perm and wonderfully captured nasally Antipodean accent) we soon learn that it isn't just our trio of superannuated beatniks who have lost their moral compasses, it would seem that the world is entirely populated by amoral chancers. Ronnie - played with a breezy bounciness by Neely Jennings - happily slots into life in the cooperative after poor old Doris is done away with: even Detective Inspector Grubb has a carefree attitude to both the law and any of the finer moral characteristics we might expect from a man in his position. Tom Haworth performed with confidence and played the grubby Grubb with perhaps just a nod in the direction of Joe Orton's Inspector Truscott, another theatrical policeman with a darkly comic kernel. With the arrival of Rose - a professional mourner with a PhD in shoplifting - the criminal household is complete but alas, our little shoal of piranhas have invited a shark into their midst and an unhappy ending for our band of benefit cheats is guaranteed. Anne Starks added a real touch of class - and a parrot - to her portrayal of Rose, completely at ease on the stage, commanding the respect of both the characters on stage and the audience in a wonderful performance. After wrapping things up nicely in a two-hander with her fellow shoplifter Grace (played by Pauline Nolan), Rose fills the audience in on the meaning of 'Caramba's Revenge'. As the two ladies sat behind me had spent the previous two hours asking each other why it was called 'Caramba's Revenge' at five minute intervals throughout the show in the loudest of stage whispers, I won't reveal the secret here dear reader for fear of depriving you of the same exciting opportunity should you go to see the show yourself. Suffice to say however, this is a play well worth catching if you can, although whether the production will be as confidently played and superbly executed as it was here is doubtful. Non-sequiturs flew around the stage with gay abandon, dialogue fizzed along and in the hands of a uniformly excellent cast, the play received a surely unbeatable airing.

A marvellous set - deceptively simple looking yet intricate, realistic and thoughtfully put together - created the perfect arena for the performers to feel really at home and further technical assistance from lighting and sound was faultless. The magnificent makeup from Anne Baron was of a professional standard and couldn't have been bettered: when a cast of (mainly!) young ladies are performing a matter of a few short feet away from you in the intimate clubhouse theatre and not for one moment do you get the slightest hint that these aren't in fact ladies of much older years, a form of theatrical alchemy has taken place in the makeup department: many congratulations Anne. Costume changes were snappy and didn't hold up the action, with carefully chosen music masking the changes between scenes. Of course, as well as the help from wigs, costumes and makeup, characterisation is vital in creating the illusion and it was obvious that director Therese Ball had worked well with the cast in making their characters really work. I also applaud Therese's skills in getting the pace and 'feel' of the play just right: humour wasn't forced or laboured and I particularly appreciated the intelligent way in which the play was allowed to speak for itself. This was another very enjoyable evening at the Clubhouse Theatre in the company of both hugely talented and enormously thoughtful members of the society both off stage and on: what more can one say other than a very big thank you. I look forward, as always, to my next visit with keen anticipation.

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