The Upper Lansdowne Players are about to present their Autumn production for 2017.
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Fans will be keen to return to Upper Lansdowne for the fun as the players were unable to do their usual Spring show last year, due to the need for a new commercial kitchen in the Memorial Hall.
However, after much fundraising and hard work by locals, including the highly successful Country Fair in March, the kitchen is almost finished and ready to cater for the May dinner shows and afternoon tea matinées.
Renowned for their homecooked quality, the meals will accompany a truly hilarious nautical play within a play, with probably the longest title ever – ‘We Found Love and an Exquisite Set of Porcelain Figurines Aboard the SS Farndale Avenue’.
Mrs Reece, the indomitable and insufferable leader of the Farndale Avenue Dramatic Society, takes her small troupe on an ambitious production in which they lurch from crisis to mismanaged crisis.
Set in the 1930s on a luxury ocean liner and then a desert island, its cast do not always manage the full switch between their multiple roles, or if they do, they forget to stay in them.
Nor do the special effects always go as planned, or the right props turn up.
She even sets them to singing and dancing, which often deliver the unexpected, if not quite at Hollywood heights.
Think Noel Coward, glamour, gentility, romance, porcelain and treasure.
Then add a lot of blood and chaos.
It's too well directed by Vivienne Scott to be silly and too well written by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr. to be slapstick, but it will have the audience in stitches.
The cast of Cathrine Newall, Natasha Buckley, Richard Coleman, Sharyn Munro and Sue Lythgoe are supported by Ian Lythgoe upstairs in the light and sound attic, and Juno and John Jenkins behind the scenes with the very large amount of props.
Jodie Lee arranged the choreography, Rita Preece advised on the music, and the invaluable Sue Lythgoe made the costumes that the players couldn't source.
Dinner shows are on Saturdays May 6,13 and 20, seating 6.30pm for 7pm, $37.50, BYO, for three course meal and show.
Matinées are on Sundays May 7, 14 and 21, seating 2pm for 2.30pm, $25 for afternoon tea and show.
Bookings are open for tables of eight or individually, and it is first in, best table.
Book at upperlansdownehall.org.au/bookplays or call Pieta on 0409 456 846.