Audience Review

Love Me Slender

FAT chance of anyone coming to see this: a play written for radio featuring a cast of stereotypicallly bloated no hopers. I did, and I enjoyed every cliché, every simper, every look of desperation, every disparaging remark, every triumph.

Directed with some trepidation by Clive Russell, he was bale to eventually call upon a confident and competent crew, notably Liam Campbell, Paul Fortune, Mike Elliot and Emma Connolly. The cast gave it their all and it is no surprise that they'd all lost weight by the end!

Siobhan (Hazel Anderson), bullied the poor wretched in every conceivable way. Not an easy rôle, this, with many overlong lectures. Hazel was able to expand her repertoire in Act Two as it became evident that she was a control freak completely out of control. A better second half, I though. Her long suffering sidekick, Jean, was played with agonising sycophancy by Fleur Hogarth. When Jean turned mean I became slightly less convinced; perhaps it all happened a little too suddenly. Celia, played by Linda White, was the statutory ex-Girl Guide type. Whilst very funny at times I felt Linda could have overplayed it a little less. Rosie was played by Anne Travers, layer upon layer of cardigans and servility. Very convincing. Claudette, Pat Mill, became the leader of the revolution, Pat, given quite a selection of emotions to vent, gave a more measured performance than might have been. Alice Mill (who lent Mum her microskirt for the part and hasn't seen it since!) played high flying and presumably reasonably assertive Marketing Manager Lucinda, who decides she has to loose weight to squeeze between the filing cabinet and her bosses death to gain promotion. An unconvincing character made more unlikely being too ten and too twenty. Thank goodness Alice can act. Kelly, played by Emma-Ann Burley (her first acting rôle), did look likely as a very vulnerable girl with little confidence. She was on stage most of the time with little to remember to say which, she admitted afterwards with a smile, was usually a little too much!

There were one or two production difficulties during the making if this show and it is to the eternal credit of These Magnificent Seven that they volunteered, toughed it out and all stood victorious at the end.

Did anyone else come to see it? The Deputy Box Office Manager reports having to turn away many disappointed theatre goers on the last night after squeezing in an extra half dozen seats..................

Neil Husband (DBOM)

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