May, 2003

May, 2003
Don't Dress for Dinner

The Cast

Bernard.....................................................Michael Jackson
Jacqueline.....................................................Susanna Davis
Robert......................................................Alistair Anderson
Suzette.......................................................Lesley Wolowiec
Suzanne...........................................................Jean Burgess
George..............................................................Tony Gibson

The Production Team

Director....…..................... ......................….Lesley Wolowiec
Assistant Director…...................................….....Jack Burgess
Production co-coordinator….........................Charles Dorman
Technical co-ordination & lighting…........….Jacek Wolowiec
Stage & Set.…..Lynne Gibson, Russell Herbert, Tony Gibson
Stage Manager....................................…...............Mike Breeze
Prompt..........….....................................….............Avril Dorey
Costumes & make-up…………………………..Lynne Gibson
Furnishings and props……….……Naomi Dunn& Gill Mohin
Make-up............….............….............................Lynne Gibson
Publicity .............…...............…..Jack Burgess, Kevin Parker
Front-of-house team….. Chrissie Stephenson-Oliver, Craig &
Naomi Dunn, Gill Mohin, Pauline Wood, Kevin Parker,
Gill & Tim Cox

Special thanks to Painswick Post Office and The Shetland Shop for ticket sales

The action takes place one evening in February in a newly converted farmhouse in France, sometime in the recent past. Act I is set early in the evening. Act II is after dinner, the same evening.

There will be an interval of 20 minutes between the Acts, when you can enjoy refreshments from the Bar.

Programme Note

This year Painswick Players celebrates its 80th anniversary and this is our 115th production. 'Twas back in the summer of 1923 that Miss Lucy Hyett produced As You Like It in her back garden, ie the idyllic grounds of Painswick House. For the next 38 years, this truly formidable lady was responsible - virtually single-handedly - for 56 separate productions, involving some 93 plays, including a dozen Shakespeares.

For more dramatic details of the intervening years - including rare archive pictures - take a look at our website: www.painswickplayers.org.uk

Quite what Miss Lucy would have made of Don't Dress for Dinner is open to debate. Written by Marc Camoletti - who also wrote Boeing Boeing - this 'boulevard comedy' for three men and three women was a smash-hit in Paris, under the original title Pyjamas pour Six, where it ran for over two years. Robin Hawdon's adaptation of this French original was premiered in 1991 and played to critical acclaim at London's Apollo Theatre, starring Simon Cadell and Su Pollard.

The plot concerns the frustrated attempts of Bernard to entertain his chic, Parisian mistress, Suzy, for the weekend. He has arranged for a cordon bleu cook to furnish the gourmet delights, is in the process of packing his wife, Jacqueline off to her mother, and has even invited along his best friend Robert as a suitable alibi. It's foolproof. What can possibly go wrong...?

Well, suppose Robert turns up without knowing why he's been invited… and Robert and Jacqueline are secret lovers… and the cook is mistaken for the mistress and the mistress can't cook. Mix all these ingredients and you have the perfect recipe for an evening of hilarious confusion as Bernard and Robert improvise at breakneck speed!

Review

After a painful evening at the Painswick Centre watching the Painswick Players' latest production of Marc Camoletti's play Don't Dress for Dinner, I am still feeling the results of laughing constantly for about two hours. And, judging by the audience on that Friday night, I was not the only one to have a wonderfully painful evening, in the company of the strong team which the PPs had lined up for this production.

The play, directed by Lesley Wolowiec, assisted by Jack Burgess, is a masterly piece of fast dialogue about a situation which is out of hand from about two minutes into the play and which has you feeling that things simply cannot get any worse... until they do. With a backdrop of a superb set (as usual), totally professional back stage crew and costumes which were outstanding, the actors really excelled themselves.

Whenever Lesley Wolowiec performs on stage, I get the feeling that the part was really written with her in mind and never more so than as Suzette, the cook (or mistress or actress or niece...): her range of roles during this play showed off her talents to perfection. Michael Jackson and Alastair Anderson gave us beautifully contrasting men, with affairs to deal with. Their timing was spot on and the sheer physicality of their parts was exhausting for us to watch, not to mention theirs to play! Susanna Davis, the frighteningly manipulative, scheming wife and Jean Burgess - wonderfully glamorous as the very badly-treated mistress - made up the rest of this strong cast. That is, until George appeared - Tony Gibson, complete with motorcycle helmet and swagger, would not have been one to make an enemy of!

Well done, PPs - you'll have to work very hard to better this one.

Gill Cox, Painswick Beacon, June 2003

From rehearsals to performance...

A couple of divas...