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The uncut X-Beacon files January 2001
Players Plan Full Monty For Painswick! At Last, A Peep Show?
First, a dramatic welcome to the illustrious new Beacon Editor, Tony Crook - might as well try to get into his good books! – and a fond farewell to Alan Bamber, with whom I have enjoyed many a battle, grammatical and dramatical. So on with the drama… Last month, Painswick Players had a meeting to plan our comic review At Last! The Millennium Review (at the Painswick Centre on 5th, 6th and 7th April). A Painswick Players planning meeting tends to be a contradiction in terms and this one ran true to form. The objective was to put together a series of humorous sketches about Painswick down the centuries, a sort of historical comic strip (of which more later). The meeting started off quietly enough, with the traditional opening of the last couple of bottles from our legendary stock of Waitrose Hungarian Red, legendary because no matter how much we consume, there always seem to be a couple of bottles left. As the Hungarian Red flowed, so did the ideas, first as a trickle and then as a torrent. Where should we start? How about an Ancient Greek chorus line from OK Homer!, the musical of the Iliad? Or should we go for a Neanderthal Rock with the Caveman? Or back further still to a line of high kicking dinosaurs? Or, why not go back the full 4.5 billion years or so? After all, the Big Bang would make a pretty good opener… Director/ co-ordinator Jan Campbell decided to intervene and suggested that perhaps we should concentrate on the last 2000 years or so, “just to keep it manageable.” Also, she thought we should stick to events with a definite link to Painswick. Thus focused, the meeting resumed. And it was truly amazing just how many times Painswick could be linked to the major events of the last two millennia. Did you know, for example, that the little known sequel to
Shakespeare’s Richard the Second featured a Painswick lass made good? Richer
Defurred tells of a Painswickian lap dancer, one Gloria Summer, who achieved
both fortune and a certain notoriety with the Dance of the Seven Fur Stoles. She
then gave it all up to join a nunnery and the play concludes with the classic
line: ‘Now in the wimple of this convent, Maid Gloria Summer.’ Or, were you aware that the Earl of Cardigan (of Charge of the Light Brigade fame) was in fact knitted out of Painswick wool? Or that, if sea level in 1588 had been a few hundred feet higher, the Spanish Armada would have been spotted from Painswick Beacon and Sir Francis Drake could well have had his bowls match interrupted at the Institute instead of Plymouth Ho? Or that the water at Waterloo was chemically identical to that flowing in the Painswick stream at the time? Or that General Montgomery had a full English breakfast in Painswick before the D-Day landings? Admittedly, it was a dozen years before D-Day, but still… It was at about this stage that the meeting started to go out of control. Baring (so to speak) in mind the idea of a comic strip, it was but one short anarchic step to the decision that Painswick was ready for The Full Monty. Thankfully, at this point, the Hungarian red at last gave out. There is still chance for new would-be Players to become
part of this hilarity. Just call the Most Organised Jean Burgess on 01452-812
167. Believe me, it’s going to be a riot of fun on the night(s) - 5th,
6th and 7th April. Even if (as Alan Bamber might have put it) it all does seem
‘one dot short of an ellipsis’. Jack Burgess, Painswick Players |
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