Directed by Shirley Dubbins the audience enjoyed another play performed by Elstead's exuberant Thespians. This time they vouchsafed fewer murders (well only one this time) and opted for a play that opens a Pandora's box on typical village life. The Author, Pam Valentine, has done for all village societies and voluntary groups what the TV's 'Vicar of Dibley' did for Parochial Church Councils: they will never be the same again. After seeing this play I guarantee, if you have the misfortune to be serving on some village committee, you will not be able to keep a straight face the next time you are ploughing through the boring business of organising an event. You just will not be able to stop yourself imagining your real life colleagues being supplanted by their alter egos as seen in this production.

The play opens in mid winter as the village fete organising committee begins its annual struggle to get the show on the road for the great day in summer. As always the committee have great difficulty in agreeing anything. A new arrival in the village is a school teacher Angela Brownlee (played by Stacey Wills) who we are asked to believe is naive and timid. Just you wait! Nobody listens to anyone else, the Chairman and Vicar, Geoffrey Morris, played with an air of disgruntled sagacity by Richard Peachy is harassed, is alcoholic, is distracted by his perceptive wife Pauline (Elaine Devlin) who knows all about the affair he is having with Sally Martin (Kay Padwick) and worried that his faith is slipping away - as no doubt is his flock! In the last production Kay played a femme fatal most convincingly - has she been building on the experience? It transpires that her kinky sexual preferences are grist to the mill of Ethel Swift (Peggy Tilly) the village gossip source and organiser par excellence (she has been doing the tea tent for 23 years and making use of that facility to off load dud stock from her village shop). Peggy was well cast in this pivotal Machiavellian role. No village is without horses and Marjorie Organ (Karen Considine) is the archetypal Jilly Cooper in charge of pony rides and with an eye for inexperienced Angela. Observing these machinations, over her knitting for the third world, is a dear old crone Mavis Partridge (Margaret Stokes) who acts senile convincingly - just when it suits her.           

By the end of the second scene we are beginning to appreciate the psyche of these excellently portrayed characters - at this point the minute secretary Gloria Pitt (Rosa Atkinson) steals the show with a marvellous demonstration of what happens when the pressures of caring for elderly mother, bad day in the office (Doctor's Surgery) and incoherent committee finally collide - the minute pages become confetti!

Act II opens with the day of the fete wherein the secrets and hidden agendas of the characters finally unravel. The timid schoolteacher, now assertive, has had a lesbian affair with 'horsey' but has found more satisfaction with the local tearaway to the extent that she can expect a happy event. The other affairs are coming to predictable conclusions, but the Vicar is able finally to save a soul and solve the major conundrum of the day - deflating the recalcitrant bouncy castle with one well-aimed gunshot.

Amateur theatricals uncover the hidden talents of village communities and this event was no exception with the backstage team creating another convincing set. Once again PETS have produced a play that kept their audience rocking with laughter - their next efforts are awaited with eager anticipation.

Len

Next Page