Cash on Delivery

“Farce-(Noun) A comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay including a crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.”

Well, St Pauls certainly used all the words above to the letter to put on Michael Cooney’s Cash on Delivery at St Pauls School.

It is a hard space to work in a school hall - but as you entered, a living room had been created complete with four doors, two with keys, one with letterbox, settee, standard lamp, coat stand, telephone table and chairs and menacing-looking, large oblong chest set upstage. The set worked really well for the cast. Just one small point: where I was sat it would have been good to have maybe a black cloth to cover the back wallpaper that you see as you open the door, giving the illusion you were looking into the street,  thereby suspending the idea of disbelief.  Saying that, the scene was set - enter the cast directed by Paul Cohen.

Eric Swan played by Carl Bottomley had little time off stage, he must be exhausted! How he kept up with all the aliases he had I have no idea. Remembering each entrance and where he had put everyone must have been a logistical nightmare. He plays a man who falls into being a con man after losing his job and the Benefit Office just love giving him money. His web of lies and deceit soon has many people involved unwittingly in his schemes. There so many people caught in the web, that even he is losing the plot. Carl manages to keep a handle on this and crank up the pace when needed.

Brendan Higgins who played Norman Bassett took this huge role on with only weeks to go and you would not have known. His partnership with Carl Bottomley was excellent - they worked really well together, working the buffoonery and horseplay to the max. Brendan’s delivery was expertly brilliant at times and I am still chuckling at the night nurse line and I few others including the deaf scene.

Mr Jenkins, played by Howard Clare, when his character is ordered to come and check on the residents of the house, he had no idea what he was getting himself into! Howard’s ability to look bemused and perplexed and the explanation he had to witness were hilarious, no wonder he hits the sherry bottle! Then he has to explain it all to his boss - He got a round of applause for that - as well as falling off a roof.

Uncle George was played by Keith Brian, when his character was alive played this with a light touch & then gets to be the corpse that everyone else makes names up for and has to be manoeuvred and manhandled about the set by the rest of the cast. When he is finally put on a stretcher and carried away to the mortuary little did we know he would come running back on, still attached to the stretcher - hilarious!

Catherine Henderson playing Doctor Chapman had a scene-stealing cameo with just the right touch and I loved her character as the woman who has no idea what is going on and interjects at the wrong moment and is told “to sit down” - genius casting!

I could go on and on but the whole cast played their part in making this a ludicrous, comic & entertaining night out -  lovely to see a cast working together on stage with such ease, a thoroughly enjoyable night out.

Thank you for making my guest and I welcome.

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