Some People

This was a comedy that included a little bit of everything; slapstick, innuendo, word play, misunderstandings, recognisable character types, physical comedy and an unexpected reveal. Director Matthew Fyleman ensured his cast delivered every joke and the audience loved them. The luxury of having 5 on stage entrances to use gave each character a reason for leaving and the door on floor level added more laughs. This was a large cast of 16 and everyone gave 100% whether they had 5 lines or 50.

The 4 main characters worked well together. Stuart Savill gave us excellent physicality and facial expressions, as well as an interesting collection of waistcoats, as the incompetent but optimistic hotel owner, Carl Rivers.  His wife Jane, Tracey Murray, was a good balance as she was more cynical and realistic. Jack Bond, played by Sven Steinbauer, was kind and well-meaning but under the thumb of his nosey and abrupt wife, Kate Featherstone.

The smaller characters all added something to the performance. Stefan, Suran Jayathilaka, was camp and happily in love. Becky Monk was the naïve but slightly hopeless Clare. Poor Bernice, Tina Battleday, spent much of her time trying to keep her father out of trouble. Jacqueline Pullen was a funny and flirty leopard print wearing Yvonne Green and Joanna Knight had had enough of trying to excuse her mother’s inappropriate behaviour as Susie.

Yvonne Hannant was just right as the exasperated Miss Smythe who only wanted a stool to sit on and Toby Sutton-Long gave us some very funny moments as the desperate for a girlfriend David. Not least when his hair dye decision went wrong. Lisa Mayflower, played Jo Bytham was a curtain twitching gossip who enjoyed finding out about other people. I particularly enjoyed Sue Harding’s robotic delivery as Deidre, the type of customer you would avoid in a hotel, contrasting with the confidence and fluency she had as the police officer at the end. Will Murray, Richard Fisher, and Steve Dunn, Skye Gibbs, were the inept ex-cons, back to find the loot. They gave us some lovely moments with their ridiculous choices of aliases and their physical comedy. I have left Tony Pullen, Napoleon Bonaparte till last. This was a particularly daft part of the plot and Tony stole every scene he was in with his fake French accent, bicorne hat, French newspaper, shorts and wellies!

We walked in to an open stage showing us the tatty interior of the one-starred Lucky Star Hotel. Nothing quite matched, everything was slightly wobbly or broken and the wonky painting was just right. The cast moved the props easily as there were no scene changes.

The lift lights and doors were very dodgy as was the front door in the audience (I’m not sure this was planned but it added more fun.) I also liked the lift sound effects. The costumes were all relatively simple but appropriate for the characters with some good accessories used.

As this was the opening night, and it was very hot, there were a few stutters with the dialogue and the food deliveries were a little too slow to make the best of the jokes.Considering the temperature of the evening there was a large enthusiastic audience who had a good laugh. I chatted to the Director and the Chairman and met some of the performers at the end. The interval meringues were delicious and we had a very enjoyable evening, thank you NATS.

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