Kindly leave The Stage

This play opens with a dinner party hosted by Sarah and Rupert for their friends Madge and Charles.  Sarah (Claire Tidy) and Rupert (David Duffill) are about to go through a divorce and Madge (Joan Sanders) and Charles (Alec Idle), both solicitors, are handling the divorce.  So far so good.  It was after the arrival of Sarah’s Mother Mrs Cullen (well played by Liz Edwards) that things started to feel a bit strange with lines being forgotten and the off stage “prompter” being fully utilised.  Coupled with the forced posh accents I will admit to having wondered what we were in for.

It transpires, however, that we were watching a theatre performance and the rest of the play was spent learning of the off stage complications and entanglements of the performers.  The actors playing Madge and Rupert were, in real life, married to each other and Madge had been having an affair with the actor playing Charles.  This affair is what prompts Rupert to all but abandon the play’s script to seek his revenge on Charles, attempting to kill him more than once!

The play itself is an eight hander and the cast worked well together.  In addition to those mentioned earlier we had regular appearances by Angela, the overworked prompter/Stage Manager (Jennie Lanham) and the late arrival of Sarah’s Father, Edward, an actor who is past his best due, probably, to his inebriation.  Excellently performed by Mel Jones he consistently went into speeches from King Lear, much to the amusement of the audience.  The cameo of the night, for me anyway, came from Lynda Musgrave as the St John Ambulance nurse who executed her part beautifully with some lovely timing.

It’s quite a challenging piece and I felt that maybe there should have been a bit more contrast between the characterisations of the real life and stage personas.  Some additional light and shade in the dialogue might also have been useful to add to the humour.

The set and furniture were superb and really brought us amongst the action and it is to the credit of the cast and the production team that the audience was able to keep up with what was going on.

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