Run for your Wife

On Friday 13th and with nothing much on TV, the capacity audience obviously felt that the packed Village Hall was the place to forget troubles and laugh until they cried at the antics on stage with this very well chosen and balanced cast under the meticulous direction of Chris Morter (who has the eye for every detail plus design of set).

Beth Robertson and Becky Scott as the two wives, Mary and Barbara, were well cast and played up to the ‘the husband’ with strength of character, with frustration and anger, with love surviving bigamy, and coped so well with the many disastrous situations with such good timing, plus looking glamorous throughout.

The two policemen, Tuffy Butcher and Zac Sowter, from Wimbledon and Streatham were bemused by this double-act husband as the antics deteriorated into mayhem, certainly the second act gave them more opportunity to react to the situations and they came into their own. The neighbour with the ‘paint situation, Sam Mann as Bobby Franklyn, brought the house down and increased the hysteria both on stage and in the audience.

And the accolades go to ‘the husband’ John Smith played by Tom Key who was quite exceptional throughout with his sense of timing and athleticism between apartments, his desperate inventions of story and every expression portraying his dilemma of situation, his working on both wives to detox the disasters in which he was found. But he would not have succeeded so well without the support of Paul Woodhouse as the neighbour from hell, Stanley Gardner, who aggravated every disaster and joined in with hysterical aiding and abetting each situation. These two worked so perfectly in tandem with continuous thought processes which just exploded the comedy throughout, a masterly performance from both with farcical timing and expression.

Above all this was a tight knit team that gelled and just exploited the farce to the high standard that it achieved and the audience loved every moment.

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