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| Cast | |
| Maisie May | Maureen Hardwen |
| Arnold Windrush | Peter Griffin |
| Ursula Windrush | Christine McKeon |
| Miss Tate | Jenny Devonshire |
| Dad | David Hampton |
| Dora | Roz Betts |
| Chris | Chris Manning-Perry |
| Crew | |
| Stage Manager | Jerry McKeon |
| Assistant Stage Manager | Janet Hampton |
| Technical | Grant Griffiths |
| Music | Bernard Tilley |
Review
Fine start to festival
The Inter-Theatre one-act Play Festival, which is taking place at the Edward Alderton Theatre, Bexleyheath, until tomorrow, was given an excellent lift-off with the productions by Crayford's Geoffrey Whitworth Theatre and the Alderton's own company. Both demonstrated the richness of theatrical talent that abounds in the North Kent area and capacity audiences for the Saturday and Monday performances were treated to plays performed with style and skill.
A hauntingly atmospheric chiller by Arthur Aldrich was the GWT's choice to open the festival. Tautly directed by Toby Masson and called The Housewarming, it begins as a simple story of a widow sadly leaving her family house, where she has lived for 60 years, to reside in a retirement home. The young couple who buy the house, however, quickly find out that something very nasty had occurred in their new home and strange happenings occur with increasingly sinister regularity.
Eleanor McEnery gave a classic performance as a cantankerous old lady whose frail facade hides a venomous and evil being with an unearthly aura. It was a finely judged performance that never descended into the melodramatic and displayed versatile acting at its best. As the woman's sister, Lesley Robins also displayed a sure touch with a character that exhibited a modicum of normality until she too became a creature of nightmarish proportions. As the unfortunate recipients of the sisters' insidious menial and physical torments, the once happy house owners were played by Ross Holland and Libby Dix with an air of vaguely perplexed ordinariness that gave the play a biting sense of realism.
A stark contrast came from the Edward Alderton Theatre with a work that also looked at old age and memories hewn in stone. Jimmie Chinn's Too Long in the Autumn, however, mixes sparkling humour with deep pathos in its story of an ageing music hall star committed to a home for old 'theatricals' by her son and his wife.
A delightful performance by Maureen Hardwen as Maisie May, the philosophical septuagenarian, managed to steal the honours throughout a production in which she always faced powerful competition from the rest of the cast. But she made every word of her dialogue count from its raw but almost kindly criticism of her family to the string of comic 'one liners' that were delivered with the skill associated with a true variety artiste. Peter Griffin played her son as a supremely boring 'nerd' while Christine McKeon portrayed his wife as a characterless, prissy female with an aversion to any form of sexual activity. These portrayals were, perhaps, rather stereotyped but nicely fitted into the overall tenor of the play.
Completing the cast were Jenny Devonshire as the retirement home's effusive manager, Roz Betts as a slightly deranged inmate of the home who believed the building was full of geriatric rapists (an excellent cameo) and Chris Manning-Perry who provided a sensitive portrayal of an impresario anxious to return Maisie May to the world of showbusiness. There was also a brief but impactive appearance by David Hampton as Maisie's father in a flashback sequence where his ailing heart gives way when he hears that his daughter's child has been conceived as the result of a one-night stand with all the members of the band. Directed by Jean Sharp, this was certainly a production in which humour and a little pathos walked hand-in-hand with unadulterated entertainment.
Roy Atterbury
Kentish Times | 1 May 1997
