Ladies' Day

~~This time Poulner Palyers moved their show to the Scout hall due to roof repairs at their normal church hall but this worked very well for them as the size etc was more or less the same.
I really enjoyed this play by Amanda Whittington its very funny and amusing with a serious side. I liked the use of the Tony Christie songs being played to carry the plot along and the audience joined in with the snippets of music.
The play is set in 2005 when Royal Ascot is temporarily relocated to York Racecourse during Ascot’s refurbishment, and follows four women who work in a fish filleting factory in Hull I thought this scene was very realistic with the girls wearing white coats, net caps and wellies, they decide to go to Ladies’ Day to celebrate the retirement of one of the gang. Having got the next day off from work the stage and girls smoothly change into their Ascot dresses on stage while dancing to Tony Christie ‘show me the way to Amarillo’, very clever and the audience loved it.
The Ascot scenes just had a table and chairs with the racecourse back projected onto the wall, this was also very effective as the different areas that the girls went to in the play the picture changed. 
Peter Ansell’s production is spot-on and has a great cast that keep the play moving along. Each of the girls work very well with each other and they all have their own story that comes out during the play. Shelley (Steph Haywood) wants to better herself and would love to be a TV star, Linda (Adele Buxton) the Tony Christie fan who picks all the horses that have a reference to one of his songs in the name. Jan (Sally Whyte) has lived her life through her daughter and plays a wonderful drunk as she drinks the champagne, and Pearl (Janet West) plays her part very well who the day out is for, she is the first to let out her secret to Jan telling her she has been in an affair for the last seven years. Jan lets it slip to the others. 
John West has a small but great cameo as race-goer Kevin that the girls help out, and Nathan East plays lots of different characters that interact with the ladies’: supervisor Joe, ticket tout Fred, race commentator Jim, jockey Patrick (who falls for Linda and her likewise and I loved their scene together) and Barry. Pearl’s married man the scene at the end was wonderful.
I really enjoyed this play and there was lots of attention to detail, good costumes and great acting all round. It was very funny in places and quite touching too, with lots of twists and turns along the way.  Well done everyone.

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