Back to Ayckbourn for this hilarious offering with another sizeable cast, and it gave me the opportunity to be, quite shamelessly I might add, a ‘stock Northerner’ (although described in the play as “the epitome of a Knowing Northerner”), albeit with a double-barreled name. One of the enjoyable aspects of plays like this, for amateur companies, is that it is self-referential, depicting as it does the rehearsals, initial and final performances of the latest offering from the Pendon Amateur Light Operatic Society (PALOS): The Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay.
I am a quite insufferable character who doesn’t have much use for all this amateur dramatic lark, but he does like to put his four penn’orth in anyway with the director, Daffyd ap Llewellyn (Ian Dobson); he also likes the sound of his own voice, passing on the benefit of his vast experience to anyone who is unfortunate enough to have to listen, and I think he could give the archetypal ‘four Northerners’ of Monty Python and others a run for their money on his own!