Imaginary LInes

It was no small relief (To me at least) that The Swaffham Players had abandoned their intention of performing the works of little know playwright, Alan Aykbourn, in favour of an even less known work by a completely unknown (at least to me) playwright called Reggie Oliver. I was delighted to be back at the Barn Theatre at Swaffham Convent for this year’s offering, “Imaginary Lines”.
The story was as thin as £3.99 Rioja, with just the limp romantic entanglements of the four main characters to sustain us and the inspirational cameo insertions of demented book-seeker and authoress, Olga Burlap. The only reason this play stands up better than you might expect is that the thoughts of the characters are presented as asides to the audience, together with  CSI- style possible outcomes which are acted and then retracted. A little complicated perhaps, and challenging to deliver, but when it worked it was both clever and funny.
There is no question this is an excellent venue for any play and the set (designed by John Hawkins) this time, surpassed all that had gone before it. Nothing spectacular, just a perfectly functional box set with a 50/50 slit scene which worked perfectly. Lighting was a little unpredictable but more than adequate to get the job done. Costumes were contemporary and perhaps could have been changed a little more often with the passing days, but caused no offence during the proceedings.
The four main characters shared most of the dialogue fairly evenly, with Victor Tucker as Sir Michael getting just a little less quantity, but most of the quality. His “free poke” line was worth the ticket price alone. Mr Tucker was particularly well cast in this production and it was his relaxed acting style that made some of the more extravagant lines so funny. Also taking a little less of the dialogue was the superb Marcie Loan (yes, she also directed), who counterbalanced Mr Tucker with her considerably more flamboyant style. Mrs Loan was confident with her lines and owned the stage each time she was upon it.
In the two leads, Stuart Travis as Howard and Nicky Dawkins as Wanda worked well together and would have done better still with a more complete grasp of their  lines. Each time they seemed to be settling in to their stride a prompt was required and they lost all characterisation until they had regained composure. Mr Travis took less prompts but there were a few times when I was sure he had meandered round a line using ten others as camouflage. Having said that, they were both well cast and reasonably comfortable with each other throughout, working hard to put across the difficult multi layered script.
I save the penultimate paragraph for the enchanting Sue Baxter as aging and eccentric authoress Olga Burlap, who delivered a superb characterisation that never slid into caricature and lifted the whole show without undermining it. It was a professional quality performance that combined a flawless delivery of her lines with incredible use of the stage and props. With the makeup off afterwards Mrs Baxter was not as old as the character she played but still must have been doing this for some time to have become so accomplished.
My compliments to Director, Marcie Loan, for another good night’s entertainment. Her direction was well considered and neatly presented.  I watched the production on it’s opening night and I would hope that prompts will have reduced during the run. With such a complicated script, endlessly  switching from direct dialogue to audience asides and then into imaginary scenarios, I felt that a better grip on the script would have helped significantly.

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