The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Towns Women's Guild Dramatic Society’s Murder Mystery

~~If you want to escape for the evening and have a good laugh you couldn’t do better than going to see "The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Towns Women's Guild Dramatic Society’s Murder Mystery” and I think it would be hard to do better than this production from the “Too Friendly Theatre Company” Directed by Cliff Gillies. It could be said that this is a play within a play as all the cast members play members of the Dramatic Society who were also playing roles in the Murder Mystery play. From the moment we walked into the “Ormskirk Civic Centre “we stepped into the world of Mrs Reece (Joanne Wasilew) Chairwoman of "the Ferndale Avenue Housing Estate Towns Women's Guild" who produced a wonderful character and  played her important role with aplomb. determination and great comic timing all the way through the evening. In the meantime, before the play started we were entertained by Henrietta von Ludwig (Joanne Daniels) Mrs Reece’s niece, whose expertise on the piano would make Les Dawson very proud. When the evening’s performance begins we realised that the Dramatic Society were not very proficient in fact they were completely disorganised, with limited resources, props in the wrong place or gone missing, a set that was falling apart, doors that do not open, scenery which was upside down and acting which was over the top. Also there weren’t enough people to fill all the roles, so the ladies had to play a number of characters which causes confusion at times. As well as Joanne as the wonderful Mrs Reece we are treated to some great comedy performances from, Tracy Holmes Smith as Thelma, Helen Haygarth as Felicity and Sue Fryer as Audrey, between them they produced a number of wonderful very funny different characters. The ladies had also found some men to help them out with the play, they included Neil Woods as Gordon playing Inspector O’Reilly in the play, who, according to Mrs Reece, was actually the stage manager, he had stepped into the role at the last minute as Sylvia was indisposed, she explained he was rather nervous because he hadn’t been on stage since he had played the backend of Ox (presumably in a Nativity play when he was a child). Neil’s facial expression when he came on stage was excellent, he looked like a scared rabbit in the headlights. This expression which never changed was paired with a great walk, resulting in a very funny characterisation, maintained all the way through the performance. His dance with Tracy Holmes Smith as Thelma playing Daphne, to the theme tune from “An Officer and a Gentleman”, brought the house down. Trying to keep on top of things backstage and chasing around with missing props was odd job man Henry played by Pete Roney who found himself on the stage more than off, adding to the mayhem.
There were no microphones but diction and projection of dialogue was very good, generally comic timing was spot on and facial expressions were excellent which is very important in this type of production. Strangely among all the mayhem the plot could be followed although I don't think the audience would know if anything had been missed out or something had   happened that wasn't supposed to happen, although there was a change to the script at the  end just as the killer was going to be revealed( I think most of the audience had already worked it out) because Felicity was needed at home so Mrs. Reece had rewritten  the ending which didn't go down well with the rest of the cast.

Helping backstage was Mark Haygarth and Rob Darby who I am sure tried their best to keep the disorganisation organised.

Well done to Cliff Gillies and to everybody involved in arranging this outstanding evening’s entertainment, we had a great time with good company, thank you very much for inviting us

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