Out of Focus

I guess that overbooking in village halls can happen but this was an overbooking of quite a large scale with members of the various village groups all converging on the hall at the same time to enjoy their hobbies, ranging from badminton to rehearsals for a pantomime – disaster!  This disaster all started with Brown Owl in situ with her Brownie group who, at the time, were doing what Brownies do in the open air.  Then two keen badminton players turn up for their game, with a speaker coming to give a talk on steam engines and quite a few other village worthies arriving for their activities.  They included the Vicar’s wife to rehearse for the annual pantomime and unfortunately, she had had to take over the hall bookings and had obviously got in a terrible muddle with the job.  She was terrified of what her husband, the Rev. Duckworth, would say about this faux pas of hers and was extremely upset.

After a lot of recriminations were tossed about, as to who should have this particular booking, as the Vicar’s wife was so upset over what had happened , the rest of them agreed to be part of the panto with Leonard Trotter still endeavouring to give his talk on steam engines.  An extract from the Church Newsletter was printed in the programme from which we could see that Mr Trotter’s residence in the village was 42 The Ramblings – a great address for this character!

With such a divergent group of people rehearsals were full of home truths, some recriminations and problems with scenery – Cinderella’s coach was too large to get on to the stage for one!  Every thing was going to be a disaster but they did get on stage eventually. The panto costumes looked great.

The whole cast who took part in this fiasco are to be congratulated as all their different characters shone through and I guess we have all known people who were certainly like some of them!

The set was well designed and ideal for all the action taking place.

There was a lot of work for all those back stage as well as those appearing  on stage which resulted in great comedy.  Thank you all for giving us a good laugh and many congratulations to Director Diane Harris for bringing everything together.  Synergy is a word that comes to mind – a group of people with different persuasions coming together for the good of the village although the actual panto wasn’t a great success – very different from all those involved in “Out of Focus!”

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