“Just think. If there were no television and no church, none of this would have happened.”
“This” is an escalating series of pseudo disasters visiting the characters of the British farce, “Beyond a Joke”. Popular playwright Derek Benfield is not Shakespeare, but knows how to whip up a light cocktail of summer theatre fun set in the décor of an English country house and garden. Ladders, wheelbarrows and rubber boots lend a rustic air to the action, peppered by dialogue that gathers momentum and wit as it moves along.
As one of the audience on opening night, I can assure you that the set is pleasant and expansive, and the acting and direction excellent, ably overcoming Benfield’s rather stodgy first act and gathering glib momentum in the second. As characters are added the tempo accelerates.
The macabre theme is, as the title forebodes, not the least funny in itself. And that’s the whole point of the exercise. “After all,” says a central character, “It can happen to anyone.”
Beyond this very sketchy review I cannot go, without letting too many bodies, I mean cats, out of bags, closets or wheelbarrows. The lily pond is almost like a character in the play, gathering sinister overtones as it is pointed at from the stage, off in the invisible distance. As for the summer house ...
I hope I have intrigued anyone who has not seen the play yet, sufficiently to consider investing in a summer evening with the inimitable Dragonfly Theatre Company in the Trillium Court at the Gravenhurst Opera House.
There is still time to join the audience. “Beyond a Joke” completes its run on 13th August. Dinner is served.
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