Theatre Review: (The Reduced) School for Scandal, St Mary’s Parish Hall, Barnard Castle (From The Northern Echo)

Theatre Review: (The Reduced) School for Scandal, St Mary’s Parish Hall, Barnard Castle

5:00pm Wednesday 25th January 2012 in Reviews

THE Castle Players are out and about touring their winter production of (The Reduced) School for Scandal in a show that’s a visual banquet of colour with the most sumptuous costumes and no cluttering props, save a few gold chairs.

Wardrobe mistress Lesley Cutting and her team of helpers have excelled themselves. I particularly loved the red velvet number that gave Andrew Stainthorpe’s Joseph Surface an extra bit of quirk.

Make-up is terrific too: white face and red lipstick for the women with a dot of rouge on the cheeks, and men in lipstick is already funny, before you see it. Charlotte Perkins’ slippery character Snake is the most visually stunning.

Wigs? You bet: full cast bewiggment. A delirious pink one for Lady Sneerwel (Trudi Dixon), the gossip monger with enough gravitas and tittle tattle to pave the streets of any town. Then there’s the man who laughs the loudest, a lovely portrayal by Andy Moorhouse of Rowley.

Speech impediments abound and accents are de rigueur, lovely dour one from Nic Worsnop in the second half as the long-suffering servant to Joseph Surface.

The storyline? Affairs: the good, the bad and the downright indecent, to be taken and discussed often with a pinch of snuff.

Great bit of theatrical invention from director Simon Pell at the picture auction, where everyone holds a picture frame to their face.

• January 27, 7.30pm, Cotherstone Village Hall (07732-571416); January 28, 7.30pm, Gainford Academy Theatre (01325-730922); February 4, 7.30pm, Whorlton Village Hall (01833-627419); and February 5, 7.30pm, Bishop Aukland Town Hall (01388-602610)

• castleplayers.co.uk