Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswoman’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery

The Farndale Avenue Murder Mystery is, for those of you who have never seen it, one of the first “so bad it’s hysterical” comedies that have, along with classics such as “Noises Off"’, been the inspiration for such modern classics as “The play that goes wrong”.

Although it is a cliché, rather like Les Dawson’s piano playing, you have to execute this form of high farce exceptionally well to look this “bad”. With collapsing flats, disruptive backstage crew spraying tennis balls hard at the cast at inappropriate moments, actors trying to make entrances where no door has been cut in the set, sound effects deliberately too late, too early or missing there is significant danger that the timing of the comedy can be lost and the audience cannot spot what is bad deliberately, rather than just through poor execution.

Happily, Neil and his talented local cast avoided these pitfalls and delivered a very enjoyable evening of ever escalating slapstick mayhem that the audience loved as they could see that all the mistkes was deliberat.    

The cast, in all cases, played their roles as both guild members and murder mystery players with great energy, enthusiasm and comic timing.  All were effortlessly able to switch between their over the top characterisation as Murder Mystery Players in a play that was collapsing around them, into their more naturalistic roles as members of an amateur dramatic society and back again.   There was only one moment when there was an unscripted acknowledgement of the audience.  This is always very tempting to do but does involve coming out of both roles and breaks the illusion.  However, this in no way detracted from the overall comedy.

This is a play that relies on the technical crew also having a great sense of comic timing as much of the pace and humour relies on effects coming in at apparently the wrong time, lighting queues missed plunging the stage into darkness too early, and sets falling apart without warning.  Again the crew were very much on form which drove the pace and humour so much that some audience members were losing the ability to breath through laughing too hard…

Neil and his team did a cracking job with this production and I had a very enjoyable night.  Thanks to all and I look forward to seeing you later in the year.

Martin Holtom

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