Brough group hits the darts board
East Yorkshire group the Petuaria Players are challenging themselves with a modern comedy about darts this January.
Double Top is a modern life-comedy about a ladies darts team in Hull and if this rings a bell for anyone that’s because it was produced at Hull Truck in the glory days of John Godber and Gareth Tudor-Price et al.
The Players say it pushes a few boundaries for them. It contains adult themes and has some true to life language in it – not excessive – but if you prefer your entertainment to be totally expletive free, then this might not be the one for you or youngsters. That said…it would be a great shame to miss it.
Double Top is by Ron Rose, a successful Doncaster based scriptwriter and playwright as well as having run a very successful theatre company in Doncaster for many years.
Double Top itself has an interesting history. Ron wrote his original version for a David Leland New Play season at the Crucible back in 1976 with a cast of 9 women and 3 men. That ratio of women to men at the time was pretty revolutionary but Leland had already committed to a play with the more usual male-heavy weighting.
As Ron himself puts it “… and that was the story for the next 28 years. Too many women in the cast to fit your standard rep company. Double Top became my calling card, and it did get me a lot of work as it became the most popular unperformed play in the country!”
John Godber programmed it for performance at Hull Truck in 2002 and Ron had to re-write it for just 5 actors, not 12! Gareth Tudor-Price, new to Truck at that time, was to direct the premiere.
Gareth says: “We were introduced to a local female pub darts team - The Norland in Hessle - and we went along with them, in their van, to several pub darts matches and their functions. Huge buffets were laid on in every pub….”
Double Top is on at the Village Hall, Elloughton Road, Brough, at 7.30 nightly – Thursday 24th to Saturday 26th January. Tickets are £7 from petuariaplayers.com.
