FOLLOWING our feature in last month’s edition, there follows a review of the two plays recently performed at Penton Village Hall.

Zoom by Marie-Jose Zuurbier and Tess Townsend

Zoom is about the production of a play performed remotely, during the lockdown for Covid as portrayed by the actors as themselves and as characters in the play itself.

Last Panto in Penton Mewsey

A comedy about a local amateur dramatic society as portrayed through the characters of four of its members. Gordon the producer, Joyce a would-be solo singer, Margaret another member and Bernard, the stage manager. The company decide after some dissent to put on a pantomime written by the producer.

Zoom

The programme reminded the audience that it had been three years since Penton Players had put on a live production. During the lockdown, they held weekly zoom meetings to run through play scripts in preparation for the time when the live theatre was possible. The performance of “Zoom” was a logical extension of such meetings.

A decision was taken not to attempt to recreate the features of a zoom meeting by actually participating in one. Instead, the actors were allocated separate spaces or tables on the stage and spoke their lines from such positions. On the whole, I think the approach worked but did require some imagination on the audience’s part as to what was actually happening. That said, the play and play within a play were well presented and the actors gave credible performances of their characters in both, reflecting the distinguishing traits of their chacacters, again in both plays . The play within play was about a shooting accident (which lacked credibility) when the cook was cleaning one of the main characters set of rifles.

A nice touch was an electronic display above the stage showing the period that had elapsed between scenes.

It was to the cast’s and producer’s credit that they overcame the difficulty of creating an artificial zoom and got across to the audience the reality of remote acting with limited physical movement, relying on the script to convey the storyline and encourage the audience to laugh and participate.

A buffet supper was served for the audience in between the two productions with efficiency and as part of the overall cost of the ticket.

Last Panto in Penton Mewsey

With only four characters, but still about a play within a play, Last Panto was a more conventional production to which I sensed the audience responded more readily. The play builds to a climax in the final scene which in some ways reflects the opening scene when Joyce, the unfortunate would-be singer, who seems not always to be in touch with what is going on, is the only character standing and breaks into a song reflecting her aspirations in the first scene of the play. An example of her gauchness, is in the last scene when Gordon asks her to put on the horse’s head, which she does on herself rather than on the stage horse of which Gordon is the front end.

Although there are interplay and exchanges between all the characters the tension and hostility between Gordon the producer and Joyce and separately Margaret and Bernie come to the surface quite frequently producing a number of amusing passages In addition, I especially enjoyed Gordon’s account of how the society managed to come third in a festival when they were the only company to arrive because of adverse worse weather.

Overall a most enjoyable evening with two separate but complementary plays between which was “sandwiched” with an enjoyable buffet supper. Well done and welcome back to the Penton Players.