I suppose it does happen, but I don’t recall a previous example of a theatre group that decides to present the same show two years in succession, but this is precisely what Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society is committed to.
Its very successful production of The Full Monty in April last year is going to be followed this October by another unveiling of the story of redundant steelworkers who turn to stripping.
The reason? Simply because last year it played to full houses throughout its run and could easily have gone on for a few nights longer.
Unfortunately, the group finds itself one strip short of a full Monty because Richard Thornhill, who played Horse, the black man, last time round, is unable to do so this time – so the hunt is on for another black man, probably in his 40s. Ian Crohill stands by for offers of help on 01905 425264.
West Bromwich Operatic Society has already done the show twice. As with WODS, there was an interval of 18 months, but in this case there was a whole Monty-free calendar year between the dates in October 2005 at the Lichfield Garrick and in April last year at the Wolverhampton Grand.
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I have to touch the awestruck forelock to Walsall’s Grange Players.
In the season that has just closed, they presented four productions – Wait until Dark, Ladies’ Day, The Seven-Year Itch and their recent final venture, Rebecca, which completely sold out of the 936 seats available during their runs.
In such company, Charley’s Aunt “failed” with sales of 99.57 per cent. So did Two and Two Make Sex (90.6 per cent).
This is a remarkable record. The dispiriting side, if it has one, is that every production was very “commercial” – a guaranteed crowd-puller, irrespective of what the purists may say beneath their turned-up noses, but then, it is not the purists who have the problem of putting bums on seats, is it?
Moreover, Hall Green Little Theatre is announcing a season in similar vein. Its offerings begin in October with Sylvia, a comedy by A R Gurney, with such temptations as Strictly Murder, Run for Your Wife and The Twits to follow, plus Ronald Harwood’s drama, The Handyman, from May 1-9.
As if to show that it’s not all a ghastly mistake, the Hall Green studio opens in February with The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery, by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr.
On a slightly more elevated plane – though still commercial – come three studio play readings of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads.
Among all this, in something of a ground-breaking exercise for Hall Green, will be Melvyn Bragg’s musical, The Hired Man – and, of course, the pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, which runs from December 3-13.
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The Swan Theatre Amateur Company’s forthcoming studio production of Sheelagh Stephenson’s The Memory of Water features Jane Lush, Gill Charles and Amber Bluck as three sisters caught in a conflict of emotions when they meet for their mother’s funeral.
It’s a bitter-sweet reunion that brings anguish and amusement and was Sheelagh Stephenson’s first stage play, written in 1996 and winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy in tandem with the success of her Five Kinds of Silence, which won the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Radio Play.
The 2002 film version of The Memory of Water starred Julie Walters, who is at present enrapturing cinema audiences with her rib-tickling performance in Mama Mia. She is entirely responsible for my going to see it twice in the space of a week.
The STAC version of The Memory of Water will be at the Swan Theatre, Worcester, from August 19-23
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Ever intrigued by the way inventive directors manage to put a new spin on things theatrical, I got home from Tim Firth’s superb production of Henry VI with his frighteningly talented Young Rep group and I waxed lyrical about what had been an awesomely riveting evening.
Next morning, I found a note I had written on a scrap of paper and I read it aloud to my wife. This, I said, was how a young Prince from the night before had given us the preliminary warning about not disturbing the performance.
We had been told, I said: “All mobile phones now be offset, Because nothing electronic’s invented yet.” Wonderful, I said.
“No”, she assured me.
“That was Freddie in Romeo and Juliet.”
Even allowing for grandpaternal pride, Freddie, our ten-year-old grandson, had stolen the school show the previous week with his hilarious version of Paris, the man whom Capulet wanted as his son-in-law, in preference to Romeo. Of course it had been Freddie, I said. Silly me!
“No, it wasn’t”, she promptly corrected both of us, thinking on her seat. “It was at The Globe!”
And so, indeed, it was – the beginning of a magical evening with The Merry Wives of Windsor at the end of June. My brain cell is clearly unable to cope with such a surfeit of Shakespearean soirées – but I would not have missed any of them for the world.
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Staffordshiire’s Newcastle Players are planning a function at the Thistleberry Hotel – and their newsletter is clearly anxious that people will find their way there.
It asks them to remember that they can get into the function room through the door on the right hand side of the building. “Follow the sign on the right of the building”, it says, “not the one on the left.”
It also goes alarmingly anatomical with the assurance: “You don’t have to go through the main door and various back passages.”
I’m sure that a great time will be had by all, despite such killjoy restrictions.
