Brough group ends season with crime drama
Brough’s Petuaria Players switch from comedy to a crime mystery for their season finale.
Jimmie Chinn’s Take Away the Lady is the offering from this week.
Director Jayne Hewson says:
“I was intrigued – I read it and enjoyed it and so submitted it to the group,” she said, and was pleased to find that the reading went well. “Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it was well received by everyone including our more youthful members so it was nice to see that it could be appreciated by a younger audience too.” “It’s different to our usual plays – not modern but not period. By that I mean some plays seem very dated in the way they are written.”
Jayne explained that she had expected the rather stilted feel of a post-war Agatha Christie – it’s set in a family country house, perhaps in the late fifties/early sixties with a murderer in the midst – but then realised that he had written this in the 1980s in his more natural and observational style, and all the better for it.
In the play, Chinn provides glimpses into a cupboard full of family skeletons, together with some serious, and not so serious, detective work that keeps everyone guessing until the end.
Returning home from prison, after serving 15 years for allegedly murdering his mother, Matthew finds his three sisters, his wife and his father waiting for him. Still protesting his innocence, Matthew’s arrival prompts the question: if he didn’t kill Mother, who did – scornful Celia, dotty Emma, cold Lavinia, flighty Gilda or even gentle Father?
As Jayne says: “It’s not a comedy but it does have humour. It’s a wonderful, gentle thriller with everyone a possible suspect and it has a few nice twists along the way.”
The run is from Thursday 2nd to Saturday 4th May, Village Hall, Elloughton Road, Brough, 7.30 nightly, tickets £7 from www.petuariaplayers.com or 01482 666908.
