Stars explained: * A production of no real merit with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic which lifts theatre to another plane.
Half stars fall between the ratings

group

Alice Abrahall as Bell-Bell, left, Joan Hall as Margaret, Joanne Newton as Katrina and Emily Beaton as Fliss.

Bazaar and Rummage

Hall Green Little Theatre

*****

There is an inherent problem when a self help group for agoraphobics decide to organise a jumble sale. For a start the term group is a bit of a stretch as they never leave home and only ever meet by telephone.

Then, as leaving home is an anathema, it needs all the effort and persuasion their group leader Gwenda can muster to drag them, kicking, screaming, or at least shaking and terrified into the real world in this bittersweet, gloriously funny and at times heartbreakingly sad comedy which shines a light, and a laugh on mental illness.

Louise Price’s Gwenda is a recovering agoraphobic and the group and all the other charitable pies she seems to have a finger in, have become her life. She has found God, or he has found her, we are never quite sure, and she is a veritable poster girl for hang ups.

She has no truck with any new-fangled ideas about treatment, or indeed old fangled ideas either if we are honest, and seems happy to help, or is it control, her small group of sufferers. She meanders through with the only way her way even when she is not sure what her way is.

Eccentric could be perhaps too mild a term when she turns up with her late father’s standard lamp for the sale and chats to it as if it is him . . . agoraphobia it seems might have been just one of her problems in a lovely, if somewhat dotty - and daddy obsessed - performance.

Her sort of it’ll be all right version of therapy does not fit well with the modern, or even well-established practices that Fliss, played by Emily Beaton has come across. Fliss is a trainee social worker, there merely to observe the working of a self-help group. So, she is the sane one, the normal one, apart from the small matter of . . . well, are any of us really normal. Surely it can’t all be the rest, can it?

First to arrive is Katrina, ex-club singer who was once heading for the heights – until the unfortunate affair in Leicester. She was brought by her, boutique owner, dresser, lover, husband . . . who knows what he is. He is Maurice and she lives with him and came in his car, and he walked her carefully to the door of the church hall. He makes her sit in the back seat, incidentally, as it is safer.

Joanne Newton fills Katrina with a surfeit of apathy, and when asked to chronicle her standard day, getting it up lethargy level would merely be an ambition. Maurice, we discover, is her own personal portender of doom of life outside, feeding and even expanding her fears. While Gwenda has found God, Katrina has found Barry Manilow. He was promoted after she discovered Elvis was on drugs. It’s a lovely if somewhat wet performance.

Incidentally she doesn’t like anyone else in the group, or Maurice and, you suspect she is none too keen on anyone in the audience.

hands on

Louise Price as Gwenda with her hands on treatment to Katrina with Fliss and Bell-Bell  watching on

She is a survivor though, she must be to live through one of Gwenda’s hands on healing sessions which seems to have been developed from the Spanish Inquisition school of therapy.

Alice Abrahall’s Bell-Bell is the next group member brought nervously through the door. She is a bit of an outsider as she is not on happy pills like everyone else, and not only wants but is actually trying to get better, something, you suspect, is not pleasing Gwenda and her preference for maintaining both status quo and numbers. Bell-Bell is determined to see her doctor, determined to rejoin the outside world.

Her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly recently and she has brought many of his things to the rummage sale, not wanting them in the house any more. It’s another fine performance portraying a woman with perhaps more than one mental problem to contend with.

Finally we have Margaret, bleedin’ Margaret who calls a spade a . . . well a bleedin’ spade. Joan Wall gives the performance of a lifetime as the downmarket, common as muck, tell it like it is Margaret. She doesn’t care what she says or who she upsets, not that she gets a lot of chance to tell anybody anything since she hasn’t been out of the house since son Darren was born 15 years ago.

Darren! She reckons he only left the womb to see what he could nick. Maternal love never existed, the relationship is merely some sort of sense of duty, what mothers do, with Darren his own little crime wave.

Margaret is seemingly belligerent, awkward and spoiling for a fight, but underneath her armour of cockiness there is a raw vulnerability, despite her act, she is unsure and her defiance is closer to merely being defensive.

You suspect Gwenda had failed to pick her up as promised, as she didn’t want her there. She wasn’t one of her compliant, happy to do as she was told, group members. She needed real help, the sort bumble along Gwenda couldn’t give.

Margaret is both unaccustomed to dealing with people and, coming from the grim end of town, and the grim end of society, is struggling with a sort of inferiority complex which adds to the bleedin’ defensive and aggressive face she shows to the world.

compassion

Margaret shows compassion to Bell-Bell with Fliss adding support

We see her character slowly develop as her confidence overtakes her bravado and she finally tells her story. Suddenly there are no laughs to be had. It is a poignant, powerful, moving moment when the entire audience feels for her. The swearing stops and the sorrow begins.

It opens the floodgates. We hear of Bell-Bell’s late husband and his death, of Katrina and the trauma of Leicester, of Flisses irrational fears, even the fears of Judith Taylor’s WPC who only calls in at the end as the group pack up after the less than successful sale to see why the church hall lights are still on.

There are gloriously funny moments, with wonderful comic timing, there is also a serious side, we can laugh along with mental illness, it is part of life after all, but Bazaar and Rummage makes sure we never laugh at it.

This is Sue Townsend’s fifth play, it premiered at The Royal Court a week after the first Adrian Mole was published in 1982, and is carried along by sharp, witty dialogue, finding plenty to laugh at but it is all done with an underlying empathy, never with mockery; the characters, with their alien, at least to us, phobias, might be figures of fun, but they are still very human figures with very real problems and the play walks a delicate path between humour and pathos.

The result is a comedy with believable characters and lines that will make you laugh out loud, but with moments of aching sadness straddling the gap between sanity and madness. A real grown up delightful thinking man’s comedy.

Directed by Katie Hughes, on a fine directorial debut, it is played out on an effective run down church hall set and for those able to venture outside, the sale will be running to 08-02-25.

Roger Clarke

31-01-25 

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