Honeymoon Suite

If walls could talk…
This play by Tony Layton is a trilogy of one act plays each set in the Honeymoon Suite of a boutique hotel somewhere in the British countryside. We are the fly on the wall unknowing who the next occupants will be and what affairs they’ll bring. PADOS present two of the three plays in this trilogy, the first; “Something Old, Something New” sees an aged rocker who is hanging on to his dwindled success and his faithful PA who is also holding on to her own dreams of a happily ever after.

The second one act play; “Something Borrowed” unveils the secrets of newlyweds who met via a dating agency - we see some rather vital particulars (which the pair failed to disclose in their singles ads) come to the surface to reveal they’re not quite who they made themselves out to be.

Lines were not as fluent as they could have been during “Something Old, Something New” with the occasional trip up and hesitation, this is the perfect example of why directors request for ‘books down’ as early as possible in rehearsals which, if so, would avoid these unfortunate occurrences.

The stage crew had, once again, transformed PADOS house with great triumph. The only criticism here is to have paid finer detail to how the script describes the location when designing and dressing the set, what we saw appeared to reflect a room within a B&B/guesthouse rather than a £300 a night luxury suite. On the other hand, I must congratulate the team for the design of the production as a whole, I grasped how the players all dressed in black, white and/or red which stamped a suitable premise throughout until Gaynor returned form the en-suite during the final moment of the production wearing a blue jumper which was an inspired nod to complete the phrase ….”Something Blue” (the third play of the trilogy) – these fine tuning flourishes are right up my street and are the kind of features I look for and appreciate.   

Hilary Bridge as Gaynor was the saving grace of the production with an evocative and buoyant portrayal exposing the humour (in the most believable way) and spirit of her character. Gaynor’s journey from the giddy and excitable newly wed to the deceived, resentful wife was successfully displayed making this the most enjoyable performance of the night.
 
I wholly appreciate that such plays as these may appear attractive to a treasurer / society bank account being as they’re so much cheaper to stage in terms of royalties. I cannot deny that the writing in this play was missing substance, such scripts as these very often fail to measure up against professionally published material.
The society has done very well in selling this play in comparison to others I’ve seen at PADOS house which is promising considering we’ve never heard of this piece but I feel it would be a sure advantage to revert to specialist catalogues in terms of the plays content, there are a lot of contemporary titles amongst experts listings should you continue to venture towards the more experimental plays.

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