Cast

Surrey Mirror Review

Phillipa Rushby

THE subtitle of this play is An Entertainment on Marriage and this most succinctly summarises the enjoyable evening spent at The Miller Centre recently.

First performed in 1970, Mixed Doubles comprises several sketches by various authors that link together to take the audience on a journey that celebrates love and marriage from the initial wedding service to discussions in the cemetery. In the course of the programme, a large number of people appear on stage in various professional capacities. The characters in Mixed Doubles appear to be plagued by everyday trivialities, their pasts, their jobs, and their marital problems.

In their most comfortable theatre, The Miller Centre Players' choice of play evidently provided them with time for careful rehearsal. Great attention was given to characterization and interactions in the small cast scenes. The timing was slick in all sketches - in particular, the Pinter duologue, which can be difficult to deliver with all the required pauses, was exceptionally good. Mary-Rose Goodliffe and Ian Brown seemed to have really engaged with the script and brought the end of the first half to a most enjoyable conclusion. Pinter's use of the third person pronouns instead of names keeps things impersonal, yet the strong love between these characters is evident and was well played.

Reg Anderson took on the daunting task of delivering five monologues; all penned by George Melly and opened the evening with a super rendition of The Vicar. The script for this sketch was probably the best of his five pieces and allowed him to run with a fantastic bumbling clergyman persona.

The sets were simple but most effective and cleverly designed - most notably the railway carriage that was viewed from the outside and inside. The cast were used to move scenery, costumed appropriately and with unscripted banter which really helped to keep things moving.

Large images were sometimes projected on to the back to set a scene, varying from a countryside scene for some campers and a cemetery for the final scene. This was far more interesting than using painted flats and easy to change rapidly.

Barbara Beckett, director, led a solid cast through an unusual genre of theatre and left the audience appreciating the time when couples met, fell in love, stayed married and grew old together.