Bazaar and Rummage

Little Waltham Drama Group 

30^th April

Jim Hutchon was at the Memorial Hall

Little Waltham’s Spring Production was this sad and funny play from Sue Townsend. Director Peter Travell got the best out a script that uses humour and pathos to highlight the problem some have with the fear of leaving their house. Bringing their possessions to a rummage sale is the allegory for discarding their past, and the catharsis of being out eventually starts them on the road to recovery.

Linda Burrow was authentically overbearing as the ‘ex-agoraphobic’ voluntary social worker keen to keep the group dependent on her, and Victoria Rossiter was good as the quirky trainee social worker with a short fuse, “How can you call this lot a group when they’ve never even met each other?”  Wendy Padbury-Clark showed a fine mixture of snootiness and vulnerability as an amateur ex-model, and Vivienne Abrey was perfect as the obsessive middle class housewife struggling with the suicide of her husband.

All had problems which, rather too neatly, led to their self-inflicted incarceration, but none more so than Jackie Pitwood, who took over the stage as a very convincing drop out with an acerbic line in invective. The laughs were there aplenty and, generally, the cast made the best of them, though they occasionally talked through them – a first night problem. The long rehearsal time showed in the confidence the cast had with their characters, which enabled some truly memorable exchanges of anger and frustration to develop.