|
This was the first live staged performance of Victoria Wood's gentle comedy about group of, well, dinner ladies. The fact that 'dinnerladies' is a well loved and well known television series allowed the Director, Rosemary Mackinnon, and the very able cast to get on with the job in hand – the serious business of making people laugh – without first having to establish relationships and character identities.
The show opened on a fantastically life-like set: the kitchen and canteen of the fictitious northern HWD Components company came complete with industrial-sized cooker, fridge, dishwasher, sink and the temperamental toaster. Praise for this enormously life-like set is surely due to the set designers (Rosemary and Jim Mackinnon and their gang) and those in charge of props (Anthea Penhallow and Kirsty Hill).
The dinner ladies are led by Bren (Jenny Swan), who is all things to all people. She wears many hats depending on what she is doing or who she talks to… Not literally, you understand – thanks to the great costume department (Mary Berry and Gill Gordon-Williams) she wears the regulation cap and striped apron along with her black tights and white ankle boots and socks – an inspired touch. From the outset, the audience has the feeling that Bren is "in charge" here. She is pivotal to the action and it is to her that each character turns in moments of need and crisis.
Bren and Tony (Richard Bruce) open the show and their complicated "will they, won't they" relationship was immediately apparent. They did a great job of sustaining the pace of their complicated relationship and the pathos between the two characters, Bren's warmth and compassion when it comes to Tony's hospital appointments (happily resolved as a "false alarm") and his trust in her were touchingly portrayed.
Tony is the kitchen's manager and is clearly baffled by female thought processes, but he means well and his double-entendres and mildly saucy remarks are either taken in good humour or simply ignored by the dinner ladies. His persistent attempts to find someone willing to go on the Kilroy show were wonderfully underplayed and all the better for that.
The other dinner ladies were equally wonderful to watch; the complicated interrelationships of the group saw Anita (Kelly Webber), the "token person of ethnic descent", have a run-in with a hair dresser which has her running to the loo to repair her Fatima Whitbread "do", while she desperately tries to get pregnant and takes everything absolutely literally.
Meanwhile, in an ironic twist, the lethargic Twinkle (Ruth DeMasi), whose listlessness was superbly maintained, thinks she might be pregnant following a romantic pizza. It turns out to be a false alarm, but it does give the audience the chance to see her softer side.
All the while, Dolly (Gill Gordon-Williams), who is constantly on a not very strict diet and even has a set of scales on stage, which she used at least once twice per act, quietly bickers with her best friend, Jean (Catherine Whitehead) who spends most of the first act organizing her daughter's wedding only for her daughter to arrive and ask Bren to break the news that they are already married after realizing they didn't want a big wedding. Their middle-aged one-upwomanship was a joy to watch.
The new Human Resources manager, the delightfully talkative and eager to please Phillippa (Wendy Barr), and her suggestions for team building exercises – "Scottish Dancing, anyone?" – are mostly shrugged off, though her "bring your mother to work" day is grudgingly taken up and much hilarity ensues in the final act (name of act) as the amusingly mis-matched mothers (and fathers) turn up. Cue several brilliant cameos in the form of Connie (Dot Smytherman) Jean's mother, Enid (Vera Lawson) Dolly's dreadfully dour mother and Phillippa's middle-class mother Hilary (Raymonde Grenville). The ensuing tea party was a great vehicle for some real belly laughs with the rest of the supporting cast – including some of the WYT Kidz – doing a great job.
All the while, in the background, lurks the officious handyman Stan (Noel Kent). His inability to "lighten up" and reliance on his father's army experiences, rather than his own, give us an insight into a deeply self-conscious person. Even so, he plans and executes with military precision, a multitude of small battles with the bins, the toaster and most hilariously, paper dispenser in the ladies loo. His oft-repeated cry of, "Male operative in female conveniences" led to some good old-fashioned farce.
And talking of farce, we come to Petula (Barbara Liddle), Bren's mum. She lives in a caravan, which eventually ends up parked by the bins at the back of the kitchen much to Stan's indignation. This gives the audience more of an insight into her personal life then they might perhaps have wished for: during her affair with Clint (Nathan Whiting), the teenage Goth, in 'Scandal' an early Monday morning look into the kitchen reveals soiled smalls drying over the work surfaces, rubbish all over the floor and Petula shuffling into the kitchen to make a cup of tea wearing a nightie over her clothes and breaking wind noisily.
The audience feared for the hygiene of the kitchen every time she appeared and since they had been made to feel a part of the action by joining tables where sandwiches and savouries were served in the first interval and tea, coffee and biscuits in the second (congratulations to Mary Berry sandwich-maker-in-chief and the rest of the Front of House team), Petula's unsavoury habits were all the more delightfully horrid.
'dinnerladies' was an ambitious show to take on, given the television show's following and as it was a live stage premier, too. However, the cast and backstage crew came together to produce an incredibly authentic show which they proceeded to make their own rather than relying on the original for the characterisation. The working environment felt incredibly genuine and added much to the authenticity of the show.
This was a believable and wonderfully comic show with a cast (and backstage crew) who provided a constant level of performance as well as a delightfully high proportion of loud laughs for the appreciative audience. Well done one and all.
|
