The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of “A Christmas Carol”

This was an excellent way to start the Festive Season with a most amusing version of ‘Christmas Carol’. The first half was very funny but I felt the script lost its way a little after the interval, with some of the amusing bits being repeated too often, as in the Cratchit house when there were references to sitting on chairs which were not there. It is a wonderful opportunity for ‘ham’ acting, with people representing ‘amateur’ performers; it is difficult to portray poor acting successfully without going over the top, and becoming cringingly awful, but this production achieved the right balance.

The evening started with a lovely ‘housekeeping’ announcement given by Mrs Reece, ‘The Producer’ of the play.   Then came the dilemma of several cast members being delayed and so how long can they hold the start of the play.  Mrs Reece decides to recruit a member of the audience, who is the right size to fit the costume, to play Scrooge.  This enrages ‘Thelma’ when she arrives and realises what is happening, as that is her role.  The cast consists of 4 ladies and 1 man, who from the programme notes is actually their stage manager, so there is a great deal of doubling of roles.

The stage had been divided into three sections, an open area at the front, which stretched the width of the stage and had a black gauze dividing from the back, and became the area for several scenes. The area behind the gauze was divided in half, stage right was Scrooge’s Counting House, with stage left his bedroom.  There were various pieces brought on as required, and the ‘lighting operator’ on the floor in front of the stage.

The costumes and make up were totally in keeping with the general standard of the ‘production’, with the missed lighting cues, problems with smoke machine, the offstage microphone fading in and out, and its channel picking up miscellaneous messages, Marley getting stuck in the door, lighting man with his ‘naughty’ magazine, chairs at the wrong height, props and furniture which are mentioned in the script missing and all the other mishaps which are every company’s worst nightmare. 

Lighting sound and props were kept very busy through out, making sure everything went to plan; at least we presume all the ‘problems’ were there by design.

The cast of five had a real challenge firstly to establish their actual characters and then change to the various characters they portrayed.  They handled it very well.  We quickly realised that Mrs Reece with her ‘Best Actress’ award, was most definitely in charge, but there was a huge power struggle between her and Thelma.  Thelma had the advantage over everyone else as she had only one role, Scrooge, and desperately trying to hold everything together.  Mercedes certainly should not have been on stage at all, with her limp and surgical collar, the result of an accident with supermarket trolleys, but of course watching her trying to overcome her problems added to the humour.  Poor shy Felicity, having all those Snowman problems and then coping as half of the Ghost of Christmas Present along with Gordon.  Then we have long suffering bearded, Gordon Pugh, who has more roles than the others, and one has to wonder why, with so many ladies, ‘Mrs Reece’, gives him the role of Mrs Cratchit, it was beautifully underplayed.  They all entered into the spirit of the various roles they were playing, but their basic character still shone through.

There were some unexpected happenings, such as a tap dancing Scrooge, the puppet sized Scrooge and ghost travelling through time, illuminated by a torch clamped into the puppeteer’s mouth, was hilarious, and where did those ‘modern day’ characters come from`?  The staircase routine was amusing, with ‘Felicity’ really looking as if she was going up and down the none existent stairs.  The cast sang their songs well, and the incidental music was well chosen and fitted very well.

Director Joy Rosselli, had guided her cast and team through this technical minefield, where as far as we could see everything happened on cue.  The cast had been kept from going OTT and provided the audience with a very funny start to the Festive Season.

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