July 2000 - See How They Run

Here are some photographs from the production. Below is a copy of the review from the Hampshire Chronicle

One too many... Chameleon Theatre Company's production of See How They Run TC84/9/13

The show goes on as Chameleons mourn the passing of a trouper

Chameleons Theatre Company stalwart Derek Marks would have been proud. Only hours before curtain-up of their summer production last Thursday, the Chandler's Ford company heard the sad news that Derek, a talented actor, former chairman, electrician and founder member back in 1965 had died. They decided to go ahead with the sell-out show and cast member Mike Morris announced that they were dedicating the opening night to Derek.
The result was one of their most inspired performances. See How They Run is a well known and fairly standard farce, but the Chameleons managed to pump such energy into the situations that Geoff Dodsworth's production looked fresh, and very, very funny. A bishop, two clergymen and a couple of fake vicars for good measure, not to mention the real vicar's actress-wife and the village spinster, proved a combustible mixture. Farce can fall horribly flat when the cast aren't really up to it: the Chameleons were.

Right from Sian Hayden's achingly funny Welsh lilt, as Ida the maid, the show was a delight. You know you've got a winner when the characters who aren't actually speaking make you laugh as well, and Mike Morris, as the bewildered Bishop of Lax, was a picture.

For the record, the flimsy story is about the complications that arise when a soldier friend of the vicar's wife drops to reminisce about old times in the theatre. This is the 1940s, and the only way they can go off to a production of Private Lives in the local theatre is for him to disguise himself in the vicar's dog-collar.

Marilyn Dunbar was prim Miss Skillon, the village battleaxe who hits the cooking sherry after witnessing what she thinks is a marital brawl in the vicarage. Wayne Bradshaw and Gillian Payne played the vicar and his wife, Lionel and Penelope Toop, and Dave Wilkins was Penelope's theatrical friend, Lance-Corporal Clive Winton.

Terry James had to put on his "funny German" voice, to considerable effect, as the "intruder", Andrew Craddock was the Revd Humphrey, giving another dimension to the possibilities for mistaken identity, and Roger Hester rounded things off as Sergeant Towers.

The Chameleons' summer show, at the Ritchie Hall, traditionally has the audience seated round tables, ready to enjoy a ploughman's supper in the interval. All tickets were sold out long before opening night. RB