The Heist

The curtains opened on to a terrific static set depicting a typical London pub with great props making it very realistic.  There was a dart board and scorers on one wall, a specials menu on another, a very typical bar with all the required accoutrements along the back and exactly the type of furnishings one would expect to find. The entire set was cleverly laid out to allow good flow of persons both across and on and off the stage.  Jo Smith, the Author of this play, has such a talent for the use of characters and creates people that we can relate to within her witty and clever dialogue. The Heist opens with a powerful cast of five men, all very different characters, meeting in their local pub, before opening hours, to plan a robbery. The landlady played by Alicia Elianski sets the mood by arriving first and starts cleaning up the previous night’s chaos when her brother and four co-conspirators arrive. She gave a strong performance throughout ably assisted by Grace Consterdine as her equally strong willed daughter, Carol Clark and Simon Vyvyan.  They were all word perfect and well cast in their parts.  Now we come to the motley gang of five who all appear to have done ‘time’ and are obviously heading for disaster yet again. Bob Wakelin (the Landlady’s brother, Smudger) came over convincingly as slightly down trodden, easily lead and not a master-mind of criminals but still game to add his efforts to the scheme. In contrast Colin Mitchell (Whitey) the most opinionated character of the five, was superb in this part with some great dialogue, timing and very funny situations which had to be seen to be believed.  David Morgan (Big Al) and John Croot (Jacko) two more of the hopeless quintet portrayed their very different characters with confidence and Luke Charles (Mark) a young man who already had a police record, was decidedly ‘simple’ and obviously considered that crime was easy money and that he had just been very unlucky to get caught last time and couldn’t possibly get caught again. Great credit must go to the cast, crew, lighting and sound team who all added to making this an outstanding production. 

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