Title: The School for Scandal
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Directed by Circle 67
Performed at Bramfield Village Hall on 14 April, The Fisher Theatre Bungay on 15 April and The Cut Halesworth on 16 April 2011.
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This is the quintessential Georgian comedy: delightfully rich characters, elegant language with each word carefully chosen, a plot so complex that it is better not to try to follow it.
But it is so well known that everyone has their own idea of how it should be staged. How could it be staged? There are five different room sets, with frequent changes between them. At Bramfield the stage was narrow and at the Fisher shallow, but The Cut was just right (as Goldilocks would say). The ladies’ hooped dresses took most of the floor space and were a nightmare in the wings.
We went for symbolic scenery: five triangular pillars which could be rotated to display wall sections of different rooms. Picked out by the lights against a black background, they were quite striking.
The cast enjoyed the rehearsals. It says much for the humour of the play that we laughed throughout as characters added layers to their interpretation of their parts.
Being fairly new to Circle 67, I was slightly anxious about how everything would get done and fit together, but I needn’t have worried. Whatever the problem, someone always came up with a solution. It is this teamwork and everyone’s commitment to the project which is perhaps our greatest strength, along with the many and varied talents of the group.
The week of the performances brought its usual mixture. A good technical rehearsal on Monday was followed by a fraught dress rehearsal on the Wednesday.
Thursday saw us in Bramfield Village Hall. Everyone was determined to get it right and not a single prompt was needed, though this was perhaps slightly at the expense of the pace of the performance.
On Friday, we were at The Fisher Theatre in Bungay. The second night is always dangerous: we got off to a shaky start with many of the right words, if not always in the correct order. Being the seasoned performers they are, the cast pulled things together and the last three-quarters of the performance were excellent. Indeed, a reviewer at The Fisher wrote that we “played to perfection.”
The final night was at The Cut in Halesworth where the more spacious changing facilities and wing areas made all the off-stage work less stressful and allowed the cast to concentrate on their parts. A full house got the juices flowing. It all went with a bang. Everyone got their lines spot on and put everything into making their characters sparkle. Laughs came a-plenty from the audience and the curtain-call applause confirmed that we had delivered a memorable night of entertainment.
