CADS newsletters

Hardly pausing for breath after the excitement that was this year’s Royston Arts Festival (see reports later in this newsletter), CADS is gearing up for its next show. Auditions for the 2010 Royston Town Pantomime are nearly upon us, so pay attention! The show this year, in case you’ve not heard, is “1001 Arabian Nights (and a Matinee)” by Damian Trasler, David Lovesy and Steve Clark (collectively known as “TLC”, the writing team behind this year’s mega-successful “Puss in Boots”). It’s an offbeat take on the Arabian Nights stories, featuring Ali Barber, his brother Singbad [sic], a brace of beautiful princesses (one of whom likes to dress up as a boy), a suitably evil Vizier, the obligatory Dame and even a pantomime camel. The show will again be directed by the redoubtable Kathy Wholley, with musical direction by Louise Atkins, and look set to be every bit as much fun as “Puss”.

PLEASE NOTE: There has been a slight change in the arrangements for auditions - those for the junior chorus (11-15 years of age) will now take place from 7.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. on Monday 12 October at Greneway School and those for adult cast (over 15 years) from 8.15 p.m. on the same evening, also at Greneway. If you’ve taken part before you’ll know that these are not as scary as they sound and are open to everyone and anyone, whether or not you’ve been part of a CADS production before. For more information, you can ring Kathy Wholley on 01763 223805. Please do ring Kathy beforehand if you’d like to see the script in advance of the auditions. If you’re interested in helping backstage in any capacity (and we’re always keen to hear from you if you are), please contact the show’s producer Emma Daintrey on 01763 242906.

Our October monthly meeting is once again a play reading evening, though this time with a slight difference. Hosted by Michael Young, the evening is entitled “Brief encounters: an introduction to Noel Coward’s short plays” and will look at a couple of titles from the Master’s “Tonight at 8.30” collection – Still life, which many of you will know as the original source of the film Brief encounter, and Hands across the sea, a sophisticated variation on the classic drawing-room farce. If there’s time we may also have a look at Michael Green’s wonderful ‘coarse acting’ Noel Coward spoof, Present slaughter. The evening kicks off at 7.30 p.m. in the Drama Studio at Greneway School and will be in the usual format with a brief introduction to Coward from Michael followed by a round-the-room reading of each play. There is, however, an ulterior motive behind the evening as well - it was agreed, at the last submissions evening, that we would enter a one-act play for the Cambridge Drama Festival next Spring, and something by Noel Coward seemed a possible and popular source but we do need to choose a title and we do need a director, so we’re rather hoping that this meeting will spark someone’s enthusiasm…! Do come along, though, even if you’re not a budding director or even if you’ve no intention of setting foot on a stage – you’re always welcome to attend just to listen and we may even run to a cup of tea and a biscuit! How’s that for an incentive?

Two CADS regulars feature in a production in November at Standon Village Hall. Woman in Mind by Alan Ayckbourn was the first of his plays to be told from a first-person viewpoint and is a black comedy about Susan, who awakes from an embarrassing blow on the head (she stands on a garden rake) to find that her world has become a confused mixture of reality and fantasy – her fantasy family being all together nicer than her real kith and kin. The two become more and more intertwined as Susan’s condition worsens and gradually Susan begins to wonder whether her imagined family is as perfect as she originally thought. In the Sadleir Drama production, directed by Jenny Giles, David Atkins plays Dr Bill Windsor, the family’s GP, and Craig Maddox plays Susan’s son Nick, who hasn’t spoken to the family since joining a cult in Hemel Hempstead (as you do). The show is being performed from Tuesday 24 to Saturday 28 November at 8.00 p.m. and you can contact David on 01763 242467 for more information about tickets. Sadleir Drama does in theory have a website at www.sadleirdrama.co.uk but at the time of writing it was still under construction…

The 2009 Royston Arts Festival has just finished and this year it was bigger and brighter and bolder than ever, with 64 events over four days, many of them featuring members of CADS. By all accounts, it was a stupendous success and the town was certainly buzzing all weekend. The small gods that look after such things had obviously decided to arrange some propitious weather and the sun positively beamed down in appreciation, particularly on the Sunday afternoon. Here are just a few of the highlights, and I’m sure we can be forgiven for concentrating on those events where the group had some input:

The Festival opened in fantastically glitzy style with a Grand Opening Cabaret, hosted by CADS regular and professional singer Debbie Denton (Debbie Tavner). A wealth of local acts, ably assisted by a few professional performers and a couple of specially invited surprise guests, kept a capacity audience thoroughly entertained with a variety of song and dance from a range of decades. The setting was glamorous, the food excellent, and the talent prodigious, including wonderful performances from our own Wendy Watts singing Sondheim as though it had been written for her, Edward and Alice Atkins bringing a tear to many an eye with moving performances of songs by Abba and Lennon, and of course Debbie herself, more than competently linking all the acts together as well as contributing her own voice to the proceedings, backed memorably at one point by Alison Bass and Barbara Perry in what was clearly a line-up to rival the Sugababes! A few more CADS faces could, from time to time, be glimpsed running the sound and lighting rigs and mention should also be made of the organising group behind the event, which included Vikki Keppey, Wendy Watts, Barbara Perry and Paula McQueen, who worked tirelessly for months to ensure that it was such a triumphant success. The whole evening was brought to a rousing climax with the whole ensemble joining for “I’ll be there”. If you weren’t there, you missed a really brilliant start to this year’s Festival.

Of course, the main event as far as CADS members were concerned, was the return to the stage of the ladies from Farndale Avenue in the comedy farce The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery: Murder at Checkmate Manor by David McGillivray & Walter Zerlin Jnr. This was certainly one of the slickest and funniest shows CADS has put on for some time as well as one of the most technically challenging. Our resident drama critic, Roy Maddox, comments:

“Having enjoyed the Farndale Christmas Carola few years ago, I wasn’t sure that another play from the series would live up to the standard that had been set then. But I needn’t have worried – the CADS version of the Farndale Murder Mystery was every bit as hilarious! Director Emma Daintrey sensibly re-cast many of the same actors, which only served to increase the enjoyment of the show for anyone who had seen “Christmas Carol”, and many knowing back-references to that show were cunningly inserted into this one. Alison Bass in particular stood out as the embodiment of Phoebe Reece, formidable but slightly batty organiser of the Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society, and Pauline Rowe again positively revelled in the role of Thelma Greenwood, perennial leading lady and Phoebe’s arch-rival; the sparring between these two was all together believable and even extended beyond the confines of the actual show to some audience interaction before the start of the show and an impromptu spat during the mock curtain call. Barbara Perry, playing a different Farndale character this time round, displayed her usual comic genius and versatility in a number of roles in the “play within a play”, and Paula McQueen demonstrated an amazing energy and gift for timing that complemented the group beautifully.

“The trick with the Farndale plays is always to make the deliberate mistakes seem genuinely accidental, the terrible acting a sincere attempt to be better than you really are, and by and large the cast and crew pulled this off with aplomb. The set itself was wonderfully tacky and convincingly precarious – how the techies managed to make that chess table disintegrate at precisely the right moment every time is probably what makes them among the finest amateur backstage crews around! The direction was tight where it needed to be but still allowed the cast to extemporise when interacting with the audience in their Farndale characters; I might have shortened the chair-moving sequence a tad, though it was beautifully and very slickly done and very funny, and a few of the sound effects could have done with some further editing, but these are extremely minor quibbles and the overall impression was one of a group more than comfortable with the whole concept and enjoying very minute of yet another excellent CADS production.”

The showcase event on Saturday night was, as ever, the Grand Festival Concert in the parish church, which again featured several CADS members in an assortment of roles. Kathy Wholley, Alison Bass and Sue Philippo, as members of the Festival Committee were there in attendance, of course, and provided refreshments and much encouragement, as well as vocal support, from the back of the church. Michael Young compered the evening, and David and Louise Atkins variously played, sang and conducted with several of the groups of musicians representing Meridian School. The Youth Choir enchanted everyone as usual, and the Town Band gave their customary stirring performance. The concert ended with the now traditional flag-waving, foot-stomping, sing-along Last Night of the Proms finale and was a grand way to end Saturday night’s festivities.

Mention should also be made of sometime thesp Alix Cooper who, in one of her many other guises as a member of the Priory Quilters, was delighted on Saturday to be awarded first prize for her work on the theme of “Harvest”. This was a double surprise in that the prize was awarded by Kathy Wholley who, as Chair of the Festival Committee, had been asked to judge the competition without (it should be stressed) knowing whose entries she was judging.

The drama workshop with Robin Belfield, Staff Director of the National Theatre, ended up not only being moved from Saturday to Sunday because of Robin’s work commitments, it also ended up being moved from the intended venue to the parish church, due to a communication breakdown surrounding keys! That aside, it was generally agreed to have been a great success and it was good to have Robin back in Royston. Having once appeared famously as Man Friday in a CADS pantomime, Robin admitted during the question-and-answer session that followed the workshop, that working with the group had really made him feel part of a team and part of a community. Mind you, he did also mention that it was probably the longest time he’d ever spent dressed in a loincloth!

Apart from the Sunday performance of “Farndale”, one of the undoubted highlights of Sunday (if not of the whole Festival) was the truly brilliant “Royston’s Twilight Zone” - a 45-minute guided walk around the centre of town, focusing on local tales and folklore with a bit of genuine history thrown in. CADS stalwarts Kathy Wholley and David Atkins, who were the tour guides for the walk, had been expecting a large number of people – in the event they managed to attract no fewer than 115! It was quite a sight to see such a huge crowd of people navigating the town’s narrow lanes and alleyways, but to their enormous credit the two guides managed to keep them enthralled and amused throughout the tour. They were assisted in this by a number of familiar faces – Angela Sassoli appeared in gown and wig to represent old-style justice in Royston, Michael Young and David Quilty enacted one of the town’s more amusing anecdotes, Wendy Watts was Mrs Duff, the sweet shop owner disturbed when the leg of her upstairs neighbour’s bed crashed through her shop ceiling, Alison Bass, hotfoot from Farndale, impersonated tragic local pub landlady Mrs Gatward, and several members of the Atkins and Bass families played out a touching tableau representing the plague victims of Royston. All in all, a wonderful and unusual end to a festival that just gets better from year to year…

Looking ahead to November, please keep your diaries free for a very special monthly meeting when we welcome Rex Walford as our special guest speaker. Rex will be well known to most of you as the driving force behind the Cambridge Drama Festival (he’s also a former Head of the Department of Education at University of Cambridge, Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a published author to boot, as well as having a scarily detailed knowledge of early British films!). Rex will be speaking to the group about the advantages of entering drama festivals in general, and about the Cambridge Drama Festival in particular and will talk about his experiences – “some of them amusing, I hope!” – of festivals through his work as a drama adjudicator. There’ll be the chance for a general discussion afterwards and the opportunity to ask questions, so do please make every effort to come along – it should be an enlightening evening! The November meeting takes place at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday 4 November at Greneway School – for more details, please check the Events secton of this website.

If anyone wants us to put information in the next newsletter, or you would like something discussed at the next committee meeting, please contact Michael Young on michaelyoung@hewitsons.com or call 01763 223805. Deadline for sending stuff for inclusion in the newsletter (e-mail preferred) is 22 October. Don’t forget, if you need to contact the club we have an e-mail address you can use - cads_royston@yahoo.co.uk - or you can use our Contact page to send us a message.