The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

I enjoyed Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole books when they came out but hadn’t seen a stage production, and this one by the Amateur Players of Sherborne exceeded my expectations. I hadn’t realised from the publicity that it would be a musical version so the songs came as a surprise, and they worked brilliantly, enhancing the telling of the story and engaging the audience. The musical arrangement by Mike Stanley was simple, just a piano accompaniment which he played himself, but it was superb, perfect for the intimate, domestic settings. The songs helped greatly with the challenge of staging a diary, which by its nature is episodic and switches rapidly between locations, and so not particularly conducive to a smooth flow of a story; they focussed the attention of the audience and drew them in, assisting with the flow of the action and the arc of emotions embedded in the various scenarios. The speed of the scene-changes, with everyone in the cast taking turns to help, also assisted in this, so that they weren’t overly intrusive. Above all the challenge was surmounted by the very strong cast and by the Director, Bev Taylor-Wade, who created three dimensional characters from the page. Well done to them all, they made it into a whole, an organic piece and more than the sum of the episodic parts.

The performance started before the metaphorical curtain went up on the piece proper, with members of the cast having a New Year’s Eve party at the Mole family house and interacting with the audience as we were coming in and taking our seats, as though we were guests as the party. This set things up for Adrian then to talk to the audience regularly through the play as he recounted from his diary, and at the end the audience were brought in again when Adrian got one of them to take a photo of the whole cast gathered for Bert and Queenie’s wedding.

Adrian Mole’s character, as both narrator and protagonist, was on stage for nearly the entire play and the actor played him to perfection. He totally inhabited the character and delivered a tour-de-force performance, achieving great nuances, bringing out the different elements of the complex teenager: angst-ridden, determined, caring, loving, self-knowing, self-deceiving, pretentious, self-mocking etc. He had the challenge of singing the first song, ‘The House Where I Live’, and nailed it, preparing the ground for what followed. Fundamental to the success of this show is the strength and believability of the Adrian characterisation, and this was a triumph. His sheer stamina and energy were most impressive, not to mention the feat of line-learning for this part, and he received a thoroughly well-deserved round of applause for his high-speed, high-octane description of an intense day. I overheard a member of the audience behind me say to her companion at the end of it ‘he’s terrific’, a view with which I concur.

This is not to detract from the brilliance of the other actors, who all succeeded in bringing their parts to life and making them three-dimensional rather than caricatures, and full of humour. While Adrian is at the core of the piece, it is very much a team show, relying on the ability of each of the other actors to interact effectively as characters, with him and with each other, to create the world of Adrian Mole (aged 13 ¾). It was a very strong cast indeed. Pandora was an excellent foil to Adrian and she played the part with great confidence, really coming into her own in the second half, including singing with aplomb a song about having potential. Her duet with Adrian, with lovely harmonies, was a highlight.There was substance and humour to the roles of Scruton, an Official, and Matron. A great job was done of portraying both Adrian’s best friend Nigel and the school bully Barry Kent. With the latter he created just the right pitch of menace, mixed with a sense of a vulnerability lying buried beneath, and was particularly powerful in his rendition of the song ‘Got To Do it’, in which he strode aggressively down the audience aisle as he sang.  Grandma was perfect, played with great subtlety, and her song about her dead husband, sad but humorous, was a delight. Thr actors brought out both the humour and the pathos as Mr and Mrs Lucas. Mr Lucas’ doomed affair with Adrian’s mother Pauline, was horribly funny and sad at the same time, testimony to how well it was acted by them both.

Indeed, this’ performance throughout was a great strength of the production, playing Pauline Mole with immense gusto and verve. Her song towards the end, ‘Coming Home’, came across as really heartfelt and Geroge Mole was brilliant as the put-upon, hen-pecked husband, creating just the right contrast to Pauline. His solo song, too, was very moving, as he held to his breast the photograph of his wife from whom he was separated. It was the ability of actors portraying the members of the Mole family to show a range of emotions and relate, and then not relate, to each other that drew the audience in. The trio song towards the end with Adrian and his mother and father, ‘My Lost Love’, was wonderful. George’s love interest, Doreen Slater, was very well played  who also demonstrated that she has a very fine singing voice.

A special mention must be made of the superb character acting as Bert Baxter, the grumpy 89 year-old whom Adrian visits as part of his school’s Good Samarian programme. He was totally convincing as Bert, including a challenging scene in which he was at first without his false teeth and then put them in – realistically unpleasant and riveting at the same time. His reflections on his life as an ostler, looking after ‘osses, was an absolute delight, as was his song about ‘the bad old days’. Bert’s vivacious companion Queenie, who ends up marrying Bert at the close of the play, was played with joie-de-vivre and panache. Both her acting and singing were spot-on, and the duet she sang with Bert was another highlight of a wonderful production.

Particularly enjoyable were the many little gems of humour, performed to perfection; such as Pauline Mole telling Mr Lucas how she broke the news to Adrian that his pet mouse had died, or George Mole taking the last biscuit which Adrian had had his eye on, or Adrian recounting how, when his parents were arguing in their front garden, he put on a sad face because he ‘knew the neighbours were watching’. All little touches, but they added up to a lovely layer of humour across the piece as a whole.

The set and props were very effective. Largish cubes on the stage were moved around to create different elements of furniture, and lighting was used cleverly to differentiate the various settings and locations (school yard, youth club disco, various houses etc). A nice touch was the Guardian newspaper of the period with a headline about the IRA Brighton bomb attack at the Conservative party conference, as was the toy dog on wheels used to represent Adrian’s pet dog.

The play was both very funny and very moving. It was, in fact, joyous; and the confetti raining down at the end for Bert and Queenie’s wedding seemed to represent this. Congratulations to everyone involved on a superb production and a wonderful evening out for the audience.

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