Music Hall: Review
LADIES and gentlemen, for your delectation, prepare to be delighted, surprised and maybe a little titillated by a sparkling series of salubrious, scintillating solos, subtly sequestered into a stylish symposium.
Lots of songs.
That was how chairman Glyn Maflin opened the Lindley Players’ Music Hall at Whitstable’s Playhouse Theatre
He adopted a slightly contemporary stance, more like a stand-up comic.
The five nights of entertainment proved a gentle run-up to the town’s Oyster Festival.
Among the highlights were Bob Spaul as the short-sighted Chinese magician Im So Dim and his assistant Gladys (Emma Thomas) battling through three illusions in a box; Lesley Foster using up an industrial pack of hankies with I Never Cried So Much In All My Life, and the hysterically off-key Cheryl Mumford singing Popsy Wopsy.
But the show-stealing routine was the If I Wasn’t On This Stage I’d Rather Be A… routine with some immaculate choreography which looked so dangerous it should have had a safety net.
It is good that companies like the Lindley Players are keeping music hall alive.
Also mentioned in dispatches should be Caroline Jordan’s rendition of The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery, Roy Drinkwater’s Cockney fest Wotcher and Katy Campbell’s saucy When I Take My Morning Parade.
It would, however, have been nice to have seen more of co-directors Dr Howard Lee and Peter Brissenden on stage.
John Nurden
Whitstable Times Review: 29th July 2011