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The uncut X-Beacon files April 1998
Tense time for PaDS: Victorian villainy follows April FooleryGentle readers, I am on the horns of a moral dilemma. By the time you read this, our sparkling Spring Revue April Foolery, will have sparkled and been extinguished in an orgy of mutual back slapping and back stabbing in the finest traditions of 'community theatre'. My problem is - and here I feel I must reveal one of the darker secrets of the publishing world - I am actually writing this column at least a fortnight ago (if you see what I mean) and a good week before the show goes on. Hence my dilemma. Do I brazen it out and gush about what a triumph it all was? Or do I come clean and admit that, whilst all looks very promising and both nights are sold out, there remains the nagging possibility that the cast may yet all be abducted by aliens or the Church Rooms may be bulldozed to make way for a multi-storey car park? Perhaps a new time straddling tense - something like a future conditional past - would get me off the hook: "...April Foolery was would will have been a great success and packed audiences will were loving every minute of it..." I am/was wrestling with this tense problem when the beloved Mrs B, the Most Organised One (or the MOO, as she is known in the Burgess household) popped her head around the door: "You're not still writing that PaDS article! I've never known anybody to take so long over such a simple job! I don't know why you can't just scribble it out and get it finished." In my mind, I tried to imagine a similar scene chez Shakespeare: "Will! Sitting there sucking your quill won't get that Hamlet written. It's all much ado about nothing with you. Don't forget you've got at least a couple more Henries to do before the end of the week! Never mind about to be or not to be! The question is, what were you up to last night when you should have been writing? It's the twelfth night in succession you've been out carousing. And don't think I haven't noticed you sneaking in with Mistress Elizabeth Pace! How much longer is this going on before you realise how silly you are being? Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this Betty Pace to the last silly Billy of recorded time. Oh, how I wish I'd married your brother, Percy. He's a real writer. Real quality: people will still be reading him centuries from now, you mark my words. The quality of Percy is not trained, he was born with it!" Enough of this foolery! Let's review the revue and hang the consequences. April Foolery was an outstanding success. Competition for seats was intense and packed audiences on both nights rocked with laughter and returned home finer, more fulfilled citizens. There! Having looked back to the future, let us now look forward to the past. The time for Victorian villainy is nigh! Cunning plans are afoot to stage Victorian melodrama - or to be precise, two Victorian melodramas - in the courtyard of the Falcon on July 11, as part of Painswick's Victorian Day. Fair damsels, dastardly villains, dashing heroes, weeping widows etc are all invited to a first read through on Tuesday, 5th May at 8-00 p.m. in the Library Rooms. If you can't make it, but would like to take part, please give the Most Organised One a call on 01452-812 167. All this and still PaDS hasn't yet been formally constituted! Jack Burgess As-Near-As-Dammit-The-Painswick-Dramatic-Society |
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