Cheshire Cats

This was a well written comedy with a serious side to it. The plot is the arranging and taking part in a Moonlight Walk by six girls to raise money for the fight against breast cancer. The dialogue was incessant and the six walkers kept up the pace of the action throughout the evening without stop. That fast moving pace was broken up six times with the main actors in a spotlight making a soliliquy about their inward thoughts of why they were walking. The name, “Cheshire Cats” comes from the outfits for the walk, being headbands with cats’ ears and bras with cats’ eyes and eyebrows. All the comedic parts - which were most of the evening - were perfectly timed and produced much laughter from the audience.

Hilary (Aimee Bullimore) was the leader of the group and did her best to motivate the other five.The ever eager and helpful Vicky (Zoë Green) was happy to take orders up to a point but would curb Hilary’s enthusiasm when it became a little too much. Siobham (Simone Munroe) was the peacemaker in the group and she was also doing her best to curb the anger of Yvonne (Emma Godden). Yvonne was there in order to have a girls’ night out without children or men and so was thwarted in this aim by Vicky whose sister dropped out at the last minute and was replaced with her newly found boyfriend (Mark Barnes). The sixth member of the team was Maggie, who was unfit and found Hilary’s strict leadership and routines quite daunting. 

The second half had nine snapshots of various marshalling points during the walk. There were still plenty of laughs but as the physical problems beset the girls in their quest, the comedy moved a little towards the several cameo parts that were necessary for the race marshalls, police and general public. The Drunk (Les Burstow) had a particularly entertaining part which we all enjoyed.

Two scenes were at the railway station and one person who never even appeared on stage was the Station Announcer (André Doré). His dialogue was wonderful - it portrayed a bumbling person who was of no help to the passengers whatsoever and any British Rail executives would probably have wanted to sue him.

The scenery was simple and effective. The lighting was very straight-forward and brings me back to the six spotlight soliliquies. The sixth and last one was by Maggie, which brought the play to a close, and was so moving and could have brought, and probably did bring, a tear to the eyes of some of the audience. 

Congratulations to producer, actors, backstage and technical crews for an extremely entertaining and thought-provoking evening.

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