The Bakewell Bake Off

 

This was the first time I have seen the Bakewell Bake Off and I was not sure what to expect – a new work written by a writing team of 14 and a company I had only seen plays and pantomime’s before..  

I needn’t have been concerned as what the Whitwell Players produced was a fun packed, light hearted, tongue in cheek slice of village life that, as the son of a Methodist minister, reminded me of many harvest festival competitions I had seen around the country.

I always enjoy coming to see the Whitwell Players, the welcome, the hard work and the warmth from both stage and audience alike are infectious.  It is always a production by the “village for the village” and at the same time no one is or feels excluded.  Tonight was no exception.

The premise of the musical is based around the age-old competition between rivalling Bakewell bakers as to who has the best Bakewell Pudding/Tart - is it almond topped, icing and a cherry or a full-blown pudding?  

This competition structure provided the perfect backdrop for both judges, and contestants to either indulge in “casting couch” enticement of the male judge (a nice interaction between Neil White and Julie Cookson), describe how baking is the way they have developed their gender alignment (excellent transgender work from Paul Wood without significant corpsing), express their devotion as a nun (Vicky with the strongest vocal performance of the night as Sister Mary) or have integrated into small village life (a very believable characterisation by Sarah Reynolds as Dr Pradeepta Smith).

The comedy highlights were, as usual, delivered by Nic Pelham (the perfect high energy compere with just the right amount of audience participation), Luke Neeve (nice sock work), Lauren Greenhalgh (playing it straight no matter what was thrown at her) and Jeanne Raspin whose authoritarian Judge reminded me at times of the Nurse in “High Anxiety”.   Georgina Goucher-Jones and Lewis Salter carried their parts well and will go far with a little work on moving their voices from “head” to diaphragm.   Christina Goucher and Laura Barrett provided great support and the whole evening was clearly the result of significant amounts of hard work and fun…

You could tell from the performances that the cast were having a great time – sparkling eyes are a tell tail sign and clearly Joanna and Peter had done some great work in the rehearsal period.  Congratulations are due to all of you as the characterisations, setting, props, lighting, sound  and vocal work were all excellent and resulted in a very enjoyable evening!  

See you again soon and many thanks for the invitation.

 

Martin Holtom

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.