It's For Charity

We always receive a warm welcome from the front of house team of this friendly group.  This year the seating was cabaret-style, and the addition of a glass of wine at our table certainly helped to warm us on this somewhat chilly and damp evening!

The show opened to the sound of Cliff Richard, and tabs opened to reveal the stock room of a charity shop, with table and chairs off-centre, clothes rails and boxes of stock scattered around, tea table with working kettle stage left, and other general 'clutter' giving a very realistic feel to the scene.  Marjorie was already on stage, and I liked the way she turned off the radio and tidied the front tabs, to make these actions part of the story.

The 3 other main characters were introduced quickly.  Each was clearly defined, and their contrasting personalities and the relationships between them, were quickly established.  They proceeded to plan their fund-raiser and we learnt that this was to be a 'Mr and Mrs' competition.  Although a large part of this scene took place at the table, variety and movement was added by characters going to the clothes rail, or pulling stock from boxes, and this prevented the scene from becoming too static.  There was a tendency in this scene and throughout, for actors to break the 4th wall and deliver punch lines 'out front', and I feel they would have got bigger laughs if they had been thrown away in a more naturalistic way.  However, the timing of the comic lines was good.

The next 2 scenes took place in front of front tabs, and again the setting up of these scenes was performed by the actors as part of the action.  The upside-down hanging of the banner was performed well, although it seemed that the actors were having to ad lib quite a lot here; this would have been a good opportunity for some more lines to 'flesh out' the characters and let us know more about them.

The 'Mr and Mrs' competition allowed the introduction of some more characters, who were brought in through the audience from the back of the hall.  The competition was well rehearsed, and held our attention well, especially with the sense of foreboding we had been given about Marjorie's husband's answers.  There were some nice touches, e.g. Harry's 'tattoos', his moving along to the supposed music in his headphones, and Tracy's struggle with spelling on the answer board.

The final scene, back in the stock room, showed a much changed Marjorie, and certainly succeeded in eliciting our sympathy for this character.  The 4 characters, now firm friends, finished the play sitting around the table, which gave a nice sense of symmetry to the piece.

It's always nice to see an original script in action, so congratulations are due to this group for making the challenging decision to follow this path.

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