‘Food
for Thought’
Three one-act plays with supper
10th
– 12th April 2003
Croft Street Community Centre, Lincoln
Our
spring 2003 production was a new venture for us: an evening of one-act
plays with supper. When one of our members thought up the bright idea
most of us imagined something tasty but simple, like shepherd’s
pie or curry and rice. But another of our members is a professional
chef, so we finished up serving posh nosh as an accompaniment to three
one-act plays.
We
took the decision to stage one-act plays because our director Su Toogood
was keen to enter ‘A Dog’s Life’ by Pam Valentine
into the Lincoln Music and Drama Festival in March 2003. She chose a
second play to accompany it – ‘Shoppers’ by Jean McConnell
– and we enlisted the support of Metheringham Players for the
third play as their production of ‘The Ark’ planned for
performance in May featured a cast made up entirely of Common Ground
members.
The
three plays were all very different but sufficiently similar in tone
to make for a coherent evening’s entertainment. Each is
ostensibly entertaining, with scope for comedy, but each is tinged with
a darker, sadder side.
In
‘The Ark’ Cecilia and her two daughters grieve for their
recently departed Dad. In their own way each tries to come to terms
with his death, and the strain of the situation begins to tell on the
sisters before a revelation brings them closer together. By the end
of the play Cecilia herself has reconciled herself somewhat to her husband’s
death and begins to see how she can
pick up her life again.
‘Shoppers’
apears to be a harmless conversational duologue featuring two well-to-do
ladies who meet on the seafront after a hard
day’s shopping at the most exclusive stores. But as the play progresses
the audiences begins to sense that all is not what it
seems. By the end of this short play it becomes apparent that Rosemary
and Angela are in fact serial shoplifters addicted to the
thrill of thieving as a way of bringing meaning and purpose to their
otherwise directionless lives.
‘A
Dog’s Life’ is a challenge for four of the cast who have
to portray dogs waiting patiently in a dog shelter, hoping one day to
be
chosen by a new owner. Again, most of the cast for this play were newcomers
to Common Ground and all but a couple were
largely inexperienced, so were pleased with the quality of the end result.
The
Lincolnshire Echo described the three plays as ‘appetising, tenderly
cooked and perfectly well baked,’ while the Lincoln
Chronicle declared the ‘ambitious’ but ‘totally successful’
event as ‘a five-star evening’.
For
the record, Ian Smith cooked salmon with a duxelle filling wrapped in
noodle paste with red pepper and mushroom mash and
drizzled with red onion and balsamic vinegar gravy followed by warm
polenta cake with summer berries and Cornish ice cream
finished off with coffee and home-made biscuits. |
