Photos

photos: Peter Whittle

In Rehearsal

Cast

Croydon Advertiser Review

Theo Spring

29th February 2008

Playwright John Godber’s complementary one-acters were a real feast – and a huge achievement for the cast of two and their director Mary Shackel.

Lives observed first hand – the author’s parents and grandparents – evolved the characters of Liz and Jack Munroe. Jack is a miner, working two miles underground whilst Liz combats the threatening dirt with constant cleaning and a never-still attitude to housework. Their Yorkshire upbringings produce a marriage of fun and ferocity with the strong underlay of love.

Introducing the Munroes and their story, Mark Pendry and Jenny Elgar’s duologue gives a potted history of the couple’s lives and their deaths, before these talented actors become Jack and Liz and reveal the incidents which have, in no particular order, built up a picture of the Munroe’s lives.

Switching into their characters, complete with never-failing Yorkshire accents, we eavesdrop on minor and major disputes, learn about the everyday events and share their memories. Because of the random time order (not nearly as disconcerting as it sounds) we have to wait to learn about the wedding day and even longer to find out how they met.

Clever direction allows both Liz and Jack to take on other personae. Grandpa Jack, bathing his much-loved grandson, a taciturn lorry driver whom they hit en route to their Blackpool holiday – the subject of September in the Rain, the over familiar game show host at their hotel where they enter and win in Mr and Mrs.

A bare set, backed with white screens, allows ingenious changes of scene enhanced by projected images. Artistic designs created by Jenny Elgar, when not rehearsing, contributed seaside cartoon grotesques with holes for your face, a most realistic upright bed, a car and two lovely old-fashioned bathing pictures for the bath scene.

The limited scenery relied on acting skills to create all manner of places – the beach had tangible sand, water and waves and the venture up Blackpool Tower turned them both, proverbially, green.

The numerous back stage crew shifted chairs, tables cut-outs and fireplaces with silent speed and, together with mood lighting from Niall Monaghan, the music, so aptly chosen, added dated atmosphere. A well earned five stars and a real treat.

Surrey Mirror Review

Peter Read

13th March 2008

Miller Centre Players' latest production, Happy Jack and September In The Rain, are two companion plays by John Godber, based on real life observation of his parents and grandparents.

Set against a background of the Yorkshire mining industry from the Fifties to the Seventies, the former focuses on the day to day mundane, amusing and often touching relationship of Jack and Liz Munroe, while the latter, in a similar manner, concentrates on the specific issue of the ‘annual holiday’.

As director Mary Shackel noted: “We used the hear of mining disasters but to fail to realise that the wives ands mothers would be continually anxious when their men were underground – no wonder tempers got frayed.”

In this duo of two-handers, Mark Pendry and Jenny Elgar were well suited as the irascible Jack and his equally impetuous wife Liz, always at each other’s throats, but always very much in love.

Some well directed action, often with imaginary third parties, helped create the illusion of time and place and rekindle our own scrapbook of childhood memories.

Who, indeed, has not had to climb over a row of seated people at the theatre, queued for an ice-cream at the beach, paddled in the sea with trousers roiled up, not to mention sitting in the holiday traffic jam?

With well tuned northern accents, both were at ease switching from their character to the narrative role which preceded each episode. Definition between roleplay and narrative was carefully augmented by specific spot lit areas which were not always found exactly by the players.

Playing on an open stage, with just three white screens placed upstage to enable the basic mood setting for each scene by use of a series of projected photos, pictures or dappled light, should have been a workable ploy, had it not been for the unnecessarily long periods of darkness which ensued whilst props were set.

On the occasions that such changes were made in full view, the general flow seemed better. That said, the use of cartooned flats depicting the fireplace, bath, bed and car, reminiscent of seaside picture postcards, was very effective and seemed apt for the sketch-like structure of the play.