Maurice Huggett

I'm afraid there's been some bad news, as Maurice Huggett, our genial landlord, passed away on December 18th. There's a fond appreciation here, in the Daily Telegraph.

It's Christmas!

Is is that time of year again? It does come around so quickly these days, doesn't it? A short play by Lo and Mo, Janice Day and her ukelele, poetry, songs and Silas Hawkins, a raffle and a pantomime from Tim Gambrell. And that's just a flavour. There is even some prize-giving. Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without'em.

Monday, December 12th. Fun starts at 7.

Sweatbox

At last! Owing to a waterlogged stage it got postponed from its initial reading. It got its reading, did well, and the call went out for some moolah to put it on. The dosh came in and Lexy Howe's two-hander set in a sauna is finally coming to the stage. It's at the Tristan Bates, and starts this Monday. Of course, you'll all be coming to P-P then, but it's on for the rest of the week too. Lexy didn't just write it, she's in it too. And there's a reduction for members when you book. The discount code is Lexy1.

The Lost Stradivarius

December 5th brings us another musical without music from Katy Darby. That is, it's the book of a musical, so we don't get to hear the songs. This is exactly what Katy did last year with Girlfriends, and it was a riproaring success, winning the best play of the year award. Can she do it again? Come along on Monday at 7.45 to find out. It's a Victorian ghost story based on a novella by J. Meade Falkner who wrote Moonfleet, which later became the Fritz Lang movie. The characters have all got surnames like Maltravers and Gaskell, and I rather suspect it concerns a violin that goes missing. I could be wrong.

Hen Night - the review

Here's Peter Thompson's report:

The Autumn Competition was staged on 21 November 2011 and the theme was HEN NIGHT. It was intended to provoke writers into providing lots of parts for our female acting members. And so it did: it was a pleasure to see Lucy Brooks, Christa Engelbrecht, Pandora McCormick, Hannah Mercer and Jane Osborne, among others, strutting their stuff. But the feminist cause suffered a little. A more suitable title might have been WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY, but there you go.
We had 10 titles in the coop and only one disqualification (for over-running). This was Mary Conway’s A BROODY STORY about a gathering of unfulfilled 30-something women whose evening was almost saved by the arrival of Daniel Dresner and James Sutherland.
Carrie Eden’s ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL was about a feisty trio preparing to indulge their passion for scantily clad men. Not Musketeers but, would you believe, Mosquitos! [193 points]. Just ahead, with 222 points, was Jan Harris’s ALL ABOUT EVE in which the bride’s girlfriends had to break the news to her that her bridegroom was gay. That came as no surprise to us in the audience having seen his gyrations; nor to the girl he was marrying, who knew exactly what she wanted. Just ahead of that [229] was AFTER THE BATTLE a tale of rape and pillage after the fall of Badajoz [1812, Iberian Peninsula War, keep up at the back there], told as only Giles Armstrong can tell it. The twist was that the sex-hungry militia were female conscripts, so Senora Andrea Kristina’s honour was saved, but Max Warrick was dragged from the cellar for a gang bang until mercifully the author called Time.
In fifth place, with 235 points, were A COMEDY IN FOUR SCENES by Jethro Dykes and MELTDOWN by Debbie Maya. In the former the party giver, Andrea Kristina again, spent all night practising her Shakespearian lines and was awarded the part at next day’s audition by a grateful Christopher Prior, grateful because it was the only line he had all evening. Meanwhile the overworked Max Warrick was making out in MELTDOWN, having casual sex with Suzie Kendall. Nice work if you can get it.
The two plays in third position with 260 points raised the tone a teeny bit. In Mark Brown’s WEDDING BELLS the bride-to-be was deeply ashamed of having touched a male stripper (yes it was Suzie Kendall in trouble again) and confessed it to her groom who was so deeply ashamed that he decided to dump her. In Peter Vincent’s DAY OLD CHICKS (aka A LIFETIME OF SHOWING OFF) Phil Philmar and Anthea Courtenay got a new start in life when their hen hatched a dinosaur.
Now for the final two. Would Bill Gordon be Cock of the Walk again with his NAKED VENGEANCE? Not this time: a mere 307 points. Philip (Philmar) Marlowe was lured into a girlie hen party in a frilly apron (nothing else) where his mother-in-law, Denise O’Leary, was waiting for him, and everything went black….. The winner, with 308 points, was a play by Kevin and Chris O’Connor that summed up the evening: BOAT HOUSE SLAPPERS. The scene is a pub where two hen parties are in progress, some ladettes getting drunk in one and some veteran players (Anthea and Elizabeth Yuill) in the other, celebrating a 50th something or other; and all of them waiting for their men to arrive. Eventually Smith Lowe turns up on his own and they all lay claim to him: he has apparently been servicing each of them in turn, unknown to the others. I said it wasn’t very edifying, but hey, it was an entertaining evening, brilliantly organised by our new Competitions Secretary, Fiona McGee.