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The uncut X-Beacon files June 1999
PaDS Mystery Ends In Victorian Joke Revelation!And so, before a packed Saturday night’s audience, Agatha was finally well and truly Crisped. For those who mysteriously missed it (and those who’d like a second chance to fathom the plot), it seems that an inscrutably independent review can be detected elsewhere in these pages. For those of us involved, there’s just the bitter-sweet memory of a happy production with a great set, the odd missed cue and the nagging suspicion that we ended up with too many corpses at the end of Act 1! Hearty congratulations to Kevin Parker, whose first shot at direction, this was: all the more notable since Kevin only made his AmDram debut as a particularly dastardly Sir Eustace at last year’s Victorian Market Day extravaganza. Of course, it was all very different in my young day. Then a budding thesp was expected to work his apprenticeship. It was ten years before I graduated from 3rd Spear-carrier (walk on, non-speaking) to Sundry Villager (walk on with limp, an ‘Aye, my liege!’ and a sudden death), all interspersed with an entire zoo-full of animal back ends. The cognoscenti of dramatic rears still remember my Daisy the Cow in an early 1970s panto production, where through rhythmic udder control alone, I was able to up-stage Aladdin, Princess Jasmine and the entire chorus and bring to a stand-still a particularly emotional rendition of ‘My Ding-a-ling’ (Don’t ask). Speaking of Victorian Market Day (which I was a couple of paragraphs ago), PaDS has made a startling discovery. Whilst clearing up after Agatha Crispie, our intrepid backstage heroes boldly went into the bowels of the Institute where no mortal foot has trod this century. (Actually it was into the loft, but bowels sounds more dramatic). Anyway, there, beneath a pile of lost shuttlecocks, temperance banners, eviction notices etc, they found the fabled Quiponitron, The Great Automatic Joke Machine. This remarkable Victorian invention, in which life-size and uncannily life-like marionettes performed hilarious jokes on the insertion of a coin, held audiences spell-bound in the closing years of the last century. However, following an unfortunate incident when Queen Victoria was distinctly unamused by an unnecessarily literal performance of the ‘Has anyone seen my little Willie?’ classic, the Quiponitron disappeared from view and was thought to be lost for ever. Now, through the dedication and ingenuity of Jacek Wolowiec, Tony Gibson and others, it is being lovingly restored with a view to displaying it in full hilarious working order on Victorian Market Day (July 11). Prepare for some really vintage humour. And remember, the more valuable the coin, the more hilarious the joke. Meanwhile the rest of PaDS is thinking about what to do for our next full production, which is tentatively scheduled for 2nd, 3rd, 4th December. We shall be reading through a whole series of possible plays over the next few weeks. If you would like to join us in this task (or if you just want to find out what these PaDS folk are really like), come along to the Institute (Green Room) on any Tuesday evening at 7.30. Jack Burgess, PaDS |
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