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Show: The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery
Society: Beckenham Theatre Company (BTC)
Venue: Beckenham Methodist Church, Bromley Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 5JE
Credits: by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jr.
Type: Sardines
Performance Date: 26/03/2022
The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery
Reviewing bad am-dram is one thing but reviewing deliberately bad am-dram is another thing entirely. After all, how does one assess how good it is? If it’s genuinely bad then perhaps the script can disguise what goes wrong onstage. But, to be serious for one moment, being bad takes as much skill as being good. Just ask the late Les Dawson – if you could – or perhaps more easily the head honchos of Mischief Theatre, creators of The Play That Goes Wrong. In the case of the latter, the onstage mishaps literally do what is says on the tin.
So onto Beckenham Theatre Company… born from the ashes of Beckenham Theatre Centre which was forced to close recently, not due to any COVID-related issues, more like asbestos in the cellar – to the extent where workman wouldn’t even go down there.
Away from the tiny, intimate venue up the road for the first time in seventy-four years, the sudden expanse of space to Beckenham Methodist Church’s high-ceilinged ‘auditorium’ may have caught a few of the cast out. But this is the company’s first production since the forced closure so we’ll be nice and let that one go (particularly as I’ve performed at BTC myself some years ago).
The five-hander was led by Deborah Hedges as Mrs Reece, Chair of the FAHET’s Guild. The experienced actress found her character well and ‘ran’ the evening with aplomb – multi-rolling, being murdered several times and even interrupting the second half to run the quiz, just prior to the climax of the show.
You know how well an evening at the theatre is going when the audience laughs a lot. Hence, the first three or four rows were in hysterics, even if we at the back didn’t really have much of a clue what was happening. That’s how little the cast were actually projecting – I literally couldn’t hear a single word that Richard Trantom spoke as Gordon Pugh playing Doreen Bishop. However, if you might kindly refer to my first point, it is highly possible that all this was part of a cunning ‘Baldrick-style’ plan.
Karen Peters-Parker (playing the ‘Guild’s’ Felicity who, in turn, takes on several men in the plot) and Fleur Buckley (director) are jointly responsible for a acquiring the use of the church as well as not letting BTC disappear. As such the pair were good enough to give me ten minutes of their time – post-show – to talk about the show and BTC’s joyous return. But that is for our June-July issue.
Elsewhere in the cast, Alison Driscoll and Clare Spencer gave good support, with the latter boasting as her alter-ego, Thelma (who plays Daphne), how she is delighted once again “to be cast as the leading lady … after my recent re-election as Miss Farndale.”
You’ll no doubt have noticed how I’ve deliberately side-stepped dropping any plot-spoilers… the scourge of many a murder mystery! What I don’t want to side-step is how the company as a whole has achieved the comeback. Portable lighting, the desk, Clare Spencer’s (part of the cast!) set design, costumes and props… the list goes on. But Saturday night’s fun was indeed cut short as the metaphorical curtain fell for the last time, causing the entire company to arguably perform the smoothest get-out in history – after all, the church had a Sunday service this morning!
Welcome back, BTC! But more projection to the back of the auditorium please?