A Small Mind At The Theatre

There have been a couple of television versions of the Mapp & Lucia novels by E. F. Benson over the years and irrespective of which generation version you might have seen, the roles of Miss Mapp and Mrs. Lucas were filled with some heavyweight performers. So taking on these roles could, in theory, be a challenge too much to live up to. However, that would be if the characters themselves were less the sum of the performer. These are great characters on paper as well as on stage and therefore Gena McCrystal (Miss Mapp) and Juliet O'Connor (Lucia) make them very much their own in the stage adaption by John Van Druten. Lucia has arrived and breezed both into the town of Tilling and the musical chair roundabout of house rental that is want to occur here. Her rented property is Miss Mapp's and for some reason, Mapp fails to follow the routine of keeping away, constantly "popping in", so the battle lines are drawn. Make Way for Lucia is the typical battle of suprem...

I never got to see Deckchairs as it was performed at the Playhouse in 2014 two shows before I discovered the place. Therefore I was coming to this follow-up cold. However this is not a sequel in any case, just another play of four totally unconnected plays, they are two handers set on a seafront or beach of some kind. None of them are thankfully performed on those impossible to put up traditional deckchairs. The style of the four plays varies, with two serious pieces of drama in the centre, book ended by two outright comedies. It forms an interesting, and not totally successful package. Written by Jean McConnell, these are quintessentially British feeling plays with often broad brushstroke and caricatured characters. The quality of the stories varies with by far the stronger ones after the interval and this is surprisingly replicated to a certain extent by the performances themselves. The opening play is titled Day Trippers and is a relatively lightweight tale of a trip of two cowo...