Dirty Dusting

It’s sometimes a bonus when a societies district Rep is away on holiday and you step in to review a show for a society you don’t know, it’s pot luck and you’re often in for a treat and this was the occasion at St Neots Conservative Club.

Dirty Dusting was the name of the production that I was about to watch and like many plays that I don’t recognise the title of, I had a quick look online. I was coming to see a comedy telling the tale of three elderly cleaning ladies who, on being advised they were being made redundant decided to set up, one weekend only, a sex line business – what could go wrong?

This was mainly a three hander with the occasional appearance of the office manager. The three characters were Elsie played by Elaine Lewis, Gladys played by Tara Dominic and Olive played by Lynda Collins. These actresses drew upon their experience to clearly display the different characteristics; Elsie was the driving force behind the idea and clearly led her colleagues. Eliane showed this clearly, not only with her dialogue, but her interaction with her colleagues, she exuded confidence and good timing with the comedic elements of the role on stage. Some lovely reactions and exclamations to the telephone conversations particularly when she realised that one caller was her grandson. To watch Elaine walking around the stage was to see that she had clearly perfected the walk of an elderly cleaner a bit fed up with her role in life, a nicely drawn performance, with great facial expressions as she listened to the calls. Olive was the bossy one and was more than happy to tell every one that she had been in Girl Guides for years and used to being in charge. Lynda did this very well with initially quite a strident voice but as her character was revealed the voice softened slightly as she became a more reserved person revealing details about her life. This was a role that developed into one humour and comedy that also enlisted a sense of sympathy from the way it was performed. To me the most interesting of the characters was that of Gladys, Tara showed her in the first act as timid and shy, horrified at the idea and desperate not to answer the telephone, her face looking downcast and unhappy. There was a great change of costume when she re-appeared in a blond wig and gold Madonna style cone brassiere, then in the second act her character was transformed into a happy and smiley persona, this was a tremendous change and really stood out to me showing how good an actress she was.

These three ladies really gelled on stage, their characters worked well together, their voices were well pitched for the comedic effects, good facial expressions, they each commanded their place onstage. Telephone conversations are sometimes poorly played but these three made it seem that they were genuinely holding conversations, the timing, the facial expressions and the vocals were so real.

Poor Dave, their boss, played by Ian Worsfold was simply out foxed and out played, but held his part well, great timing and the final scene after retrieving the vacuum cleaner from the girls when we all realised that he was one of the callers to the sex line was so funny. I’m not sure how he kept a straight face as he re-appeared, dirty, disheveled, vacuum hose in hand and then losing his trousers.

I did enjoy this comedy, it was well played, good timing, greatly drawn characters.  Dialogue was so clear and beautifully delivered in accents that held throughout. There was a simple set, but this play didn’t need a set the whole picture was drawn by the actors on stage, the cleaner’s trolley, fully dressed and a table with three telephones and chairs was all that was needed. Whoever was operating sound did a great job with the telephone rings, all correctly stopped as receivers lifted, well done. Costumes were all correct to character with just the change for Tara as Gladys bringing in more humour.

Congratulations to cast and director Glenys and her team.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.