Frantic furniture fiasco marked start of HIADS' scatty spaghetti farce

 

 

 

Patrons settled in their seats for HIADS's latest production - only to see the actors were sitting around and the set wasn't set up.

The frantic sequence that followed was probably HIADS' best ever opening as the kitchen sink, stove and a sofa were pulled, pushed or carried on stage to laughter and applause before the play had even started.

Can't Pay Won't Pay is a scatty spaghetti farce set in an Italian highrise apartment. The play was an adaptation by director Rob Finn of Dario Fo's 1970s show featuring 1960s protest politics such as liberating food (i.e. shoplifting), justice for the working class (i.e. rubbishing the cops) and equal opportunities (i.e. women mouthing it off).

In the firing line were hard working, honest hubbies who would rather die than eat stolen food and charades of humping floor, rice and sugar from one place to another to pick up Common Market subsidies en route.

The production was a beautiful breath of fresh air, starting with Jenni Spice as Antonia and Emma Rogers as Margherita, a wonderfully watchable duo. Antonia, dark, energetic, slim and prone to passionate outbursts, with flashing eyes, gets caught up in a supermarket protest about prices which ends in looting.

Returning to her flat she finds that for her protest she had only pilfered pet food. Rabbit heads, millet and tins of dog food were useless since she had no pets, but they were evidence enough to feat the eyes of a snooping policeman, an admirable performance by Gary Gwinnell-Smith who also contributed collateral roles.

He peers through the window on a precarious pole before crawling on stage via the kitchen sink. Gary's perfectly postured PC Plod had secret agendas including Chairman Mao's little red book, actually a pack of cards, and a mouthful of muttered protest jargon.

As the blonde Margherita, Emma was long suffering and loyal, but managed to hint that deep down she thought her friend was barmy. She was made to struggle the loot out of the flat, stuffed up her garments making her look provocatively pregnant.

This led to a tasteless timbre in the play, including a scene in which her waters break i.e. a bottle of olives. Also not so tasty were scenes in which hapless husbands Giovanni, Andrew Griffiths, and Luigi, Carl Wood, have to sup on a vile soup of millet and rabbits heads and prolong their active lives with tins of jolly old Pal!

In the part of righteous Giovanni, Andrew Griffiths was a hilarious dynamo of male chauvinism, floundering and outwitted by Antonia's wiles. Margherita's husband was even more vulnerable and Carl was suitably tentative, tremulous and bemused. The problem was that neither they nor the police knew anything about women's matters.

The girls were able to pass off as pregnant or unpregnant, according to whether they were stuffed with shopliftings or not. It could be easily explained as phantom pregnancies or transplants of five month old foetuses. The surgical miracle was indicated by much patting and pointing at the genital regions to the delight of some of the audience though others may have found it all a bit embarrassing.

The trouble may be that Euro farce seems far more political than Britain's native and naïve West End shows of the good, clean, smutty fan variety. In short, it was more like Channel 4 Eurotrash than a BBC2 Carry On repeat. Fo's original idea intended to be gross while Finn's added finesse was fun.

A feature of the play was a soupcon of interactive procedures such as when the Italian mob ran off the stage to grope across the knees of the second row of patrons.

There were Louisa Gibbons, Kathie Oakley, Angela Rubick, Holly Snooke and John Blackwell, ideal acolytes for Rob Finn's young ideas. John Killmister was a sterner presence infusing some order.

The HIADS set was a fine piece of all-start teamwork including Louisa Gibbons, Debbie Watson, Ken Shone, Martin Stevens and John Tappy. It was that good!

 

 

Vic Pierce-Jones

Hayling Islander