'LOVE'S A LUXURY' - A FIRST-RATE PRODUCTION
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from April 1973.
Brought to you by
ance. Keith Ball gave some good straight acting (as the perplexed.
irritable husband Charles Pentwick), trying to convince his wife.
ably portrayed by Jessie Novak, of his fidelity. Nick Press almost faultlessly carried the double role of his friend and aide Bobby Bentley, and the fictitious Mrs. Harris, interchanging in lightning fashion the voice and gestures from the male to the female part, and vice-versa.
MR. MOLE Penny Nicol, as Molly, made an extremely eye-catching parlour maid. Whilst Roderick Donaldson, who got the bulk of the applause at the final curtain, will surely henceforth be known as Mr. Mole in Cayman. He expertly bumbles his way through as the happy camper who habitually turns up at the wrong moment. His antics under the furniture in the second act, when terrified by the pretence of detectives, interrogation and a dead body are hilarious and side-splitting. Kathryn Burns as Fritzy, and Charles Glidden as Dick certainly look the part of the young couple thrown together by fate and gradually getting more and more stairy eyed. Georgia-Lee McSorley, who appears in the Third Act as the real Mrs. Harris, is made-up carefully to resemble the fictitious Mrs. Harris. PRODUCTION AND DIRECTION The overall production and direction is also extremely good.
Mole is masked and trapped on his first entry. The back-lighting is somewhat excessive, but in view of the lack of footlights, this is perhaps unavoidable. A plain backdrop might have been less distracting. Yet these are small criticisms compared with the meticulously painted Set of the country cottage which is fully realistic down to the panelling and warming pan. The play itself mixes the predictable elements of farce-mistaken identity, accidental entries, exaggerated situations and slapstick with comedy of situation two couples are embarrassingly forced to spend the night together. But really, this is a bedroom farce which never actually gets into the bedroom. Although it builds up to a good climax at the end of the first two Acts, the end of Act III falls flat. Indeed one could say that this is a first-rate production of a second-rate play.
