Last Tango in Little Grimley/Last Panto in Little Grimley
Performance dates - 2009
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Review by Harry Medawar
You know you're on to a winner when the audience is laughing so much the actors have to pause. And that happened more than once in Saturday night's performance of OHADS' latest production - a comedy double-bill by David Tristram, which provided a thoroughly entertaining curtain-raiser for Easter.
Simply staged in the Hampton Hill Playhouse's compact studio theatre, the Director John Bellamy and his small cast brilliantly and hilariously evoked the ups and downs of an amateur dramatic society that is on its last legs.
The ever-reliable Andy Smith brought to life Gordon the Society's Chairman, a director-cum-playwright who decides that sex comedies are the answer to the society's financial problems. He is ably supported by Jeremy Gill who, as the curmudgeonly Bernard, crunches his way through Gordon? s scripts and munches his way through a seemingly endless supply of bananas. And in a perfectly pitched performance, Jane Marcus made a welcome and wonderfully comic return to OHADS as Joyce the Society’s gormless Treasurer and would be light operatic lead. Completing the ensemble cast was that very good actress, Joolz Connery, playing bossy Margaret, who tries to preserve her dignity and clothes as Gordon's money-spinning ideas and defective word-processing skills produce a script that the cast can barely understand let alone perform.
A lighter piece than we are used to from OHADS but no less welcome for that. And one final word of praise for the technical and backstage team, especially Vicky Horder for her tricksy lighting design.
