Holiday Island

St John’s Players continued their encouragement of new directors with the final offering of their 70th anniversary year.  You have to admire the courage of new directors Jody Deacon and David Battom in choosing a little-known play by an unfamiliar playwright with a cast of 17 for their first foray into the world of the director.  As the saying goes “Respect guys”. 

Holiday Island is set in a Spanish hotel run by owner Luis, where a group of fresh holiday-makers convene in the lobby. The guests are fairly stock characters. The “Chavs” Tony & Tina and their two children, a non-PC pedant with a wheelchair-bound wife, a long-married retired couple, a pair of gay men and an unmarried latent flower-power pair with their teenage daughter (named Light). Add a bored holiday rep, and a couple of hotel staff and the protagonists are gathered. 

As they settle in and go about the process of enjoying their holidays, various humous situations arise.  There is a lot of nudge-nudge-wink-wink stuff going on and although we gathered is was 2014 it had very much a 70’s feel to it.  The characters, I felt, were rather one-dimensional and we never really got to know them.  

There was a good many scenes, some of them very short, set in several different locations round the hotel. The set was extremely imaginative and appeared to open out like pages of a book with one set behind the other and there was even a mini-revolve.  It was all very ingenious and certainly kept the hard-working stage crew busy who made the numerous changes as quickly as they could but this did tend to interrupt the flow somewhat.  With 17 people to accommodate plus several tables, chairs, sun-beds etc. space was at a premium.  Having said that, it didn’t appear to be a problem for the cast as they manoeuvred round the stage well.  The lighting design did all it needed too and although the sound effects were good a couple of times the cueing was a bit awry. 

Leading from the front Andi Dodds and Dean Ward as Tina and Tony hit the stage running causing havoc with their loud demands within seconds.  A very believable pair.  There was an excellent performance from Martin Hunt as Luis the buff and tactile hotel owner who was extremely helpful to his guests - nothing was seemingly a problem, until he upset the men by strutting around in his swimming trunks, although the ladies enjoyed it, both on stage and in the audience.  Conveying much without words, Prue Harrison and Colin Horne were the epitome of the long married couple - not really talking at all with wife Vera making barbed remarks and husband Reggie using feigned  interest in the Financial Times to ignore her. Ian Williamson played the crass and pedantic Brian with aplomb. The way he treated his poor wheelchair bound wife Joan, played with a fine Welsh accent by Sara Halse, was cringing.  The gay partnership of Chas and Dickie played by Simon Wheeler and Ian Toombs did not come over as well as it might have done.  They were not blessed with anything to get their teeth into called upon as they were to make several very brief appearances. Then we had Lena (Rebecca Hawker) and Mark (Abishek Reddy) with their daughter Light played by Anastasia Borakis.  This strange family were a cross between flower power and spiritualism. Funnily enough they seemed to gel!  Completing the cast was Moira Stephenson, convincing as the bored holiday rep. Grace Harper nicely flighty as Maria the fitness instructor and Simon Deacon as her barman boyfriend Javier, plus two extremely well behaved children played by Emma Battom and Ithan Butt. Like Javier they had nothing much in the way of dialogue but both used the stage in a very natural way.

There was certainly no lack of commitment from this large cast who all worked extremely well together. Teamwork was obviously the order of the day.  However, I did leave the venue feeling slightly unfulfilled and wondering whether the things which happened to this disparate group of guests really changed their lives at all.

St John's Players rounded off their 70th anniversary year with this production.  Onward and upward now to the remainder of their centenary and Cider With Rosie in February 2018.

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.