The Farndale Ave Housing Estate Townswomens Guild Production of Macbeth

My first visit to The Hempstead Players and they gave me a warm welcome. The play is only partly written by McGillivray and Zerlin, as a certain amount of it is by William Shakespeare. You see, we the audience are not actually attendingThe Farndale Avenue (you don’t mind if I just call it Farndale’s Macbeth, do you? It saves a certain amount of time at my computer keyboard.) Rather, we are in Southern England, attending a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth by a townswomen’s guild. Unfortunately for the good ladies of the guild, everything that could possibly go wrong does, beginning with the fact that Lady Macbeth is absent and must be replaced. By the stage manager. If all were to go right, this performance of Macbeth would be pretty dreadful. Luckily, however, for us as an audience in 2020 the terrible performance is in fact a good performance, so that everything that goes wrong is actually going right for us. All we need to do is sit back and enjoy – and restrain ourselves from falling off our chairs while laughing.

The Guild’s performance is particularly important to them as they are entered in an amateur dramatic competition, and Mr. George Peach the adjudicator is present. So it is very important for their cast of 11 playing nearly thirty parts, to do their very best. It is also very important for the Theatre cast to get their performances right – or wrong, as the case may be. Farndale’s Macbeth gives them a perfect opportunity to massacre Shakespeare, but brings with it the challenge of massacring him in a particular way. All in all, they pull it off, with delightful overacting, cues properly missed, and the occasional explosion, in a zany evening of fully in tune performances. I wouldn’t have known if the cast had gone wrong anyway. How can I single out any of you as I didn’t know if you were good or bad. So Hester Gilbourne, Mary Neaves, Sophie Wood, Margaret Coniam, Pat Wilson, Dave Wilson, Louisa Waters, Roger Peacock (great monologue at the end), Geoffrey Bowe, Linda Crawford, Clive Mailing and assisted at times by the Stage Managers, and others I think. Sound and Lighting went wrong of course, I wouldn’t know if it was on cue or not.

Glenn Morris (Director) you say in your biog, it’s your first time directing an adult company, don’t give up. Its not easy to direct a play where everything goes wrong, so congratulations go out to you. Also thanks to Jim Gilbourne for starting The Hempstead Players, I feel they will go from strength to strength.Thank you for inviting me, It was an entertaining evening, and see you at the next one. Welcome to NODA 

© NODA CIO. All rights reserved.