The Play's The Thing!

Everyone likes a good play, don't they? Well, not exactly everyone perhaps - my Great Aunt Dolores for example (she who was run over by a lorry but survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone only to end up dying as she threw herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel), hated going to the theatre and thought it was a total waste of one's time. The only time she would step foot into a theatre was if she were performing in a play herself. The trouble with this was that on those occasions, everyone else considered it to be a waste of their time by attending - believe me, Dolores was no Sarah Bernhardt (I still remember with embarrassed shame the disastrous run she did at the Comédie-Française in Paris, playing the lead role in Racine's Phaedre). But apart from my dear Great Aunt and her occasional, unfortunate audiences, nearly everyone else like a good play.

You will recall that I helped to produce a spectacle de théâtre here in Nottingham, in June. We staged nine different, specially-commissioned plays over a three day festival. It was a big success at the time, and all the hard work we put into it was certainly worth it in the end. I was reminded of this yesterday evening when I had dinner with some friends, one of whom announced that she had been in the audience for one performance - undoubtedly the "jewel in the festival's crown" - the most excellent 'Thanks To His Sister' written by Cumbrian playwright Robin Acland. Everything about this performance was first-class: The script, the acting, but most importantly of all perhaps - the expert direction given to the actors by the brilliant and talented Mr Paul Sellwood. The marvellous thing about this play was that it was both intellectual and comic at the same time. The intellectual bit was quite subtly and mischievously done, in as much as it was able to massage the egos of those in the audience who enjoyed catching the familiar quotations from Worsdworth (for it was he who was the play's main subject); and the comic bit came about in the tongue-in-cheek nod at the obsessions of some less than humble intellectuals. An achievement for a writer indeed.

However, as in any stage production designed to make an impact on its audience, it was the timing that was all important in this. The cast worked tremendously hard at getting this right - the effervescent Liz Smith, the exuberant Leah Burrows and the inimitably eloquent and charismatic Rob Ferguson as the historical characters; and the sultry Sarah Lee and comic genius Tom Spencer as their modern counterparts all did an outstanding job. But in my view, timing is something that cannot be fully achieved with really tight, enthusiastic and controlled direction. And in this, the superbly talented Paul Sellwood (aka "Tall Paul") performed the most admirable and first-class magic.

It's a pity that most of you missed it really, for it will not be repeated ("Shame!" you should all cry at this point). This was theatre at its very best, and it was just such a shame that this was not the play we took to Edinburgh. If we had, then perhaps we wouldn't have lost the small fortune which, as a production company, we most surely did. Oh well, there's always next year.

Break a leg, darling!