Ladies' Day

Firstly, I said it last time and I will say it again, thank you very much for the warm welcome shown to myself and my guest by Lynda Sloane (Front House) and Director, Sandra Goodall.

Ladies Day is an uplifting, humorous play by Amanda Whittington which follows four friends from their day to day job at a fish packing factory in Hull through to them attending Royal Ascot which was relocated to York that year.

The opening scene depicted the fish factory which was a very basic setting and I did feel set the tone for the rest of the production as most scenes did use very limited set/props. I appreciate that productions have a budget and sometimes the script does not allow for us to be too adventurous with the set but I would have liked to see a bit more imagination used if possible.

What was evident from the offset was the fantastic rapport between Pearl, Linda, Shelley and Jan with a particular stand out performance for me on the night by Shelley, the larger than life sassy character which was executed to perfection, so well done to you, your performance was an absolute pleasure to watch.

The pace of the show when running without pauses was on it’s ‘A’ game, but unfortunately this was jeopardised on a few occasion where the very simple scene changes took far too long, it seemed to me that you had enough stage crew but for some reason it took ages to set some very basic scenes. The change from the factory workers to the ladies day costumes to Tony Christie’s Song (Is this the way to) Amarillo was very fitting and linked well with Linda’s obsessive passion for Tony Christie. I did feel the transformation should have been sharper and not dragged out as long as it did, especially when the leading ladies didn’t seem comfortable or confident with the simple choreography. Even with the long intro into the next scene there was still a large pause and empty stage, again I felt that this did ruin the pace of the performance and gave the stop start motion! Although basic again, the racecourse back cloth was good and depicted a really clear overall setting, transporting us straight to the races.

The costumes for this productions worked well for the characters and looked perfect for Ladies Day!

Overall this was a good solid performance by the cast all giving great performances. Good direction was evident with this production which did ensure that we got to know all characters well as the story progressed.

As a pointer for future productions I do think it is really important for a Director / Production team to ensure to the best of their ability that all areas are covered with the whole production and not just the acting on the stage. I felt that more attention should haveperhaps  been given to the sound, lighting and overall visual element of the production. I did feel that the sound was a little off balance throughout the production. I think the lighting could have been a little more detailed throughout and maybe something to work on with your lighting team for future productions as I did feel the same when I watched the previous production ‘Real Inspector Hound’.

Finally and I am sorry if this ends on a negative but the creaking stage is really an issue! I am aware that your team did try to fix this and that failed but as an audience member and especially as an adjudicator I found myself at times concentrating more on the noise from the creaking stage rather than the actual production which as you know should not be the case.

All in all it was an enjoyable, uplifting production and most importantly received well by the audience and clear that every performer was happy to be back on the stage doing what they love!

Look forward to seeing you all again soon!

Lewis White

 

 

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