Not Now Darling

Not Now Darling is a Ray Cooney farce set in the late 1960s in the exclusive West End fur salon of Bodley, Bodley and Crouch and follows the events which ensue when Gilbert Bodley a flamboyant extrovert is scheming to seduce the married Janie, a beautiful stripper, with the aid of a £5000 mink. What follows is the chaos of mistaken identity, infidelity and undressed ladies!

The set was very impressive, it was well constructed, decorated and dressed and provided the perfect space for the story to unravel.

Peter Atkinson in the role of Arnold Crouch barely left the stage; he kept the pace of the action going and had the audience’s sympathy for his circumstances throughout the performance. Martyn Banks as Gilbert Bodley, played the perfect philanderer in pursuit of the married Janie. The rapport between Martyn and Peter was superb; both maintained their characters and executed the choreography of the ins and outs of the doors and the constant flow of characters through them very well. Jannie, the centre of Mr Bodley’s attention was well portrayed by Amy Bagnall, she gave her character class and huge respect to her for stripping with such conviction! Throughout the fast paced mayhem the air of sensibility came from Anne Malpass as the prim and proper Miss Tipdale, Anne didn’t put a foot wrong and her facial expressions spoke as loudly as her words. In all of the comings and goings of the salon the side story of Mrs Frencham and Commander Frenchan played by Carole Young and Brian Hardy was very good, both were perfectly cast and convincing as their characters. Christine Ward gave an assured and classy performance as Maude Bodley, the wife of Gilbert, who returned home unexpectedly early from a holiday to become embroiled in the mayhem. As the stereotypical sexy as opposed to classy stripper Sue Lawson, Amy Westwick Holden was very entertaining and a good contrasting character to Janie. There was also good support from the rest of the cast: Martin O’Leary as Harry Mc Michael, Nick Thomson as Mr Lawson and Elizabeth Baker as Miss Whittington, all portraying good character roles.

The complexity of such a play with the fast pace and the necessity of having to have the right character in the right place at the right time cannot be underestimated and Gordon did a good job of ensuring that this was the case.

Congratulations to the ladies of the cast who braved the stage in their underwear and to everyone for a very entertaining production, the audience’s enjoyment was evident by the consistency of laughter from start to finish.

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