Move Over Mrs Markham

Farce is probably the most rigorous form of drama for any cast and director - pace, energy and timing is everything.

Mistaken identities, ludicrous situations, characters in various stages of undress and risqué remarks abound in this play penned by two masters of the genre, Ray Cooney & John Chapman.

Granted, there are some well-worn jokes in this piece but they are delivered with such aplomb and with great timing by this scintillating team of hard-working actors.

There's a little pussyfooting around as director Brian Seymour sets things off at a relatively lukewarm pace which does occasionally attempt to pick up but it’s not until act II when the pace finds a much more agreeable rhythm which rather successfully marries with some visual tomfoolery synced with the actors line delivery resulting in some genuine hearty laughter from this appreciative audience.

Mrs Markham is quite a mammoth role to undertake and to simply manage to achieve what the script asks from the actress playing this role is quite an impressive feat itself, Lisa Garrish did indeed meet the demands of the part to a creditable degree, however, attention to the voice to add more variation would help to energise and brighten her spoken delivery. When one has so much to say, a slight change in pitch or tone can really aid an audience to engage with what the actor is saying which will then help the script to feel more like natural conversation as opposed to sounding like memorised sentences - but still, Lisa played a huge responsibility in holding so much of this play together which cannot go without praise especially as she appeared to take this vast duty in her very effortless stride.  

We got strong turns from David Livesey and Ian Taylor as Philip and Henry respectively, two experienced and sturdy thesps who certainly know their craft well as we felt in very safe hands whenever these two chaps were at the helm.

One character did strike me as rather remarkable. Alistair (played by Rob Livesey) was the token effeminate one, in this instance we were introduced to a lavish interior designer stressing over colour palettes and soft furnishings. A token character such as this is expected to be irrationally, and often offensively, paraded throughout a Cooney farce …I mean, everyone loved a token limp wristed queen to laugh at in the 60’s, right?! Yes, should the reader of this review not be used to such a dated genre of theatre, they’re often as blatant and as offensive as that with how gay men are portrayed. However, it was a surprise when we quickly discovered Alistair’s rather ferocious heterosexual urges to jump in to bed with women, any woman in fact, and slap the behind of the maid at pretty much every given opportunity which, I must say, I found to be rather advanced from the usual two dimensional “pansies” that’re usually featured in such Cooney plays. Could this be as progressive as being a bisexual character? Or, could this be a far more advanced statement than we’re used to from Cooney, telling us that not all effeminate men are gay!? …I doubt he’d scrape the surface of such details of his characters to be honest, it’s just not his style. I could over think this until I’m blue in the face but the bottom line is how it appeared to be absolutely invigorating (and incredibly surprising) whether it intended to be or not, to see that there was so much more to the frilly mincing queen than there usually is. Though, let’s not get too excited too quickly here as we’re soon smacked in the face with the time of when this piece was written as it becomes evident how some wording of this play really hasn’t stood the test of time, particularly when gay men are referred to as not being ‘normal’ - I know, we can’t rewrite the past as that’s likely to be exactly what these characters would have said at the time this play was written but at the same time it certainly does strike a different chord when it’s heard today.

Debbie Loofe had a job and a half, and not to mention some rather impressive and super quick changes, as she portrayed Sylvie and Miss Wilkinson. The night I attended involved a rather awkward moment when she was completely naked under a bed sheet, her stage direction was to then wrap the bed sheet around herself whilst still on the bed before being able to exit the stage without literally baring herself, however, on this performance the sheet got stuck under the leg of the bed, making it impossible for her to move. How Debbie dealt with and turned around this unfortunate occurrence involved some impressive quick thinking whilst staying unreservedly in character – so much so that I wasn’t entirely sure at this point if this was in fact supposed to happen given the way she was dealing with the horrifying moment which, to be fair, turned out to be the most comical part in the play. I was somewhat disappointed when I learned after the performance that it’d just been an incredibly well saved glitch but was also mightily impressed with how she handled it. I’d have kept it in, comic gold!

We got an incredibly hammed up act from Stephen Moss as Walter which took the play out of the farfetched category and slapped it with an ‘absurd’ label, he was certainly visually comical with his send up with a good use of his bowler hat to convey humour and his characters naïve nature was noticeably expressed.   

Helen Marland delivered clear characterisation with a likeable and lovely bubbly energy to her performance as Linda, at times she tended to become ever so slightly aware of herself portraying as a tad artificial, and I really do mean ‘a tad’, it wasn’t so much to throw her performance off course, however, was enough for me to notice – if this would have been a production in a larger theatre I probably wouldn’t have noticed.   

A favourable turn too from Dianne Manship as Olive who was believably eccentric though did give the impression she wasn’t as solid on her lines as she perhaps should have been as I suspected some paraphrasing from her which was given away from the hesitant reactions of the other players around her as opposed to anything Dianne was doing directly. This sets an audience on edge and prevents us from relaxing to relish the full potential of a performance, such senses as these are far easier to detect during a performance in such a cosy set up as at PADOS House, it’s rare that a subtle glance can go unnoticed which is ultimately the beauty of intimate theatre.  

Overall, this was a passé British sex farce filled to the brim with innuendos, witty repartee and mix-ups of who’s who! The relationships between the individuals required us to stretch our imaginations somewhat but I can appreciate that it’s not always easy to get desirable casting in this game. Rehearsals had evidently been a hoot for this troupe of players who managed to take the audience on their journey which they ultimately indulged in and relished the ridiculous.   

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