Up at Elstree tomorrow filming 3 more scenes for November,
and I'm in a couple of scenes going out in the evening
(BBC One Tuesday 18th September 7.30pm)
Monday, 17 September 2012
Friday, 31 August 2012
September News
Coming up on TV this month:
Justin's House CBeebies 11.00am & 5.00pm
Justins House Series 2 Going for Gold
EastEnders
Thursday Sept 6th
BBC1 7.30pm
EastEnders 06/09/12EastEnders
Tuesday Sept 18th
BBC1 7.30pm
Other News:
Monday Sept 10th.
Play reading of " Saving Toad"
by David Seidler ("The King's Speech")
at The Pleasance
Tuesday Sept 11th.
Panto Launch
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Tunbridge Wells
/www.assemblyhalltheatre.co.uk
Sept 12th - 22nd.
Filming two more episodes of EastEnders (for November)
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Cash on Delivery - Review 4
Wednesday 11th July
by Sally Bryant
Farce has to be fast and - well,really farcial and this one's got the lot.
The central character is in an implausible siyuation, about to get worse, and of course his wife doesn't know.
As the action romps away everyone is confused, apart from Eric Swan who is to blame for the whole mess and he can hardly hold it together. Before long there is a 'corpse' who refuses to lie down and die, a comedy chase and a man in a dress - as I said, it's all there!
Cash On Delivery is written by Michael Cooney, son of master playwright Ray, who obviously inherited the funny gene.
The plot is simple but convoluted, as the genre dictates - Eric Swan has lost his job but he has hidden this from his wife and is putting money in the bank by conning the department of Social Security. He is claiming every benefit in the book for a crowd of fictitious lodgers, but it all goes horribly wrong when an inspector calls...
The role of Eric Swan is played by Rikki Lawton, fresh out of university with a first in acting and a very bright light indeed. Even if farce isn't your favourite, it's impossible to keep straight-faced if the pace is right and Rikki goes for it like a greyhound out of the trap from the first line.
His energy and ability to squeeze every drop of humour from every word meant the whole first-night audience was laughing within minutes of 'curtain-up' - and they didn't stop until the end.
The newcomer's performance in this production is perfectly matched by the experienced comedy timing of Nick Wilton, who plays hapless lodger Norman Bassett. He has the consummate face for farce and had the audience in stitches time and time again, often with just an expression.
Michael Kirk also plays a comedy blinder as Uncle George, and deserves a round of applause for his physical fitness alone.
In fact there isn't a weak link in this chain of hilarious disasters. Anita Graham is spot on as Sally Chessington, the well-meaning but vacant bereavement counsellor and Mill regular Royce Mills excels as slightly-too-smiley-and-blissfully-unaware undertaker Mr Forbright.
And my award for the side-splitting scene of the night goes to Lawton and Felicity Duncan, whose character Ms Cowper makes any decent Miss Trunchbull pale into insignificance. I can't give away any more but to say the level is 'Carry On', with a touch of the playground, and everyone of every age was sobbing with laughter - my 18-year-old couldn't breathe or see for a good five minutes.
Cash On Delivery certainly delivers a good night out. The time is more than right for a farce resurgence amid gloomy news of floundering economies and enless rain - go on, take a seat for a really good laugh. I challenge you to remain po-faced through this one.
Farce has to be fast and - well,really farcial and this one's got the lot.
The central character is in an implausible siyuation, about to get worse, and of course his wife doesn't know.
As the action romps away everyone is confused, apart from Eric Swan who is to blame for the whole mess and he can hardly hold it together. Before long there is a 'corpse' who refuses to lie down and die, a comedy chase and a man in a dress - as I said, it's all there!
Cash On Delivery is written by Michael Cooney, son of master playwright Ray, who obviously inherited the funny gene.
The plot is simple but convoluted, as the genre dictates - Eric Swan has lost his job but he has hidden this from his wife and is putting money in the bank by conning the department of Social Security. He is claiming every benefit in the book for a crowd of fictitious lodgers, but it all goes horribly wrong when an inspector calls...
The role of Eric Swan is played by Rikki Lawton, fresh out of university with a first in acting and a very bright light indeed. Even if farce isn't your favourite, it's impossible to keep straight-faced if the pace is right and Rikki goes for it like a greyhound out of the trap from the first line.
His energy and ability to squeeze every drop of humour from every word meant the whole first-night audience was laughing within minutes of 'curtain-up' - and they didn't stop until the end.
The newcomer's performance in this production is perfectly matched by the experienced comedy timing of Nick Wilton, who plays hapless lodger Norman Bassett. He has the consummate face for farce and had the audience in stitches time and time again, often with just an expression.
Michael Kirk also plays a comedy blinder as Uncle George, and deserves a round of applause for his physical fitness alone.
In fact there isn't a weak link in this chain of hilarious disasters. Anita Graham is spot on as Sally Chessington, the well-meaning but vacant bereavement counsellor and Mill regular Royce Mills excels as slightly-too-smiley-and-blissfully-unaware undertaker Mr Forbright.
And my award for the side-splitting scene of the night goes to Lawton and Felicity Duncan, whose character Ms Cowper makes any decent Miss Trunchbull pale into insignificance. I can't give away any more but to say the level is 'Carry On', with a touch of the playground, and everyone of every age was sobbing with laughter - my 18-year-old couldn't breathe or see for a good five minutes.
Cash On Delivery certainly delivers a good night out. The time is more than right for a farce resurgence amid gloomy news of floundering economies and enless rain - go on, take a seat for a really good laugh. I challenge you to remain po-faced through this one.
Thursday, 26 July 2012
Cash on Delivery - Review 3
by Sue Hutchison
THE Mill at Sonning has done it again. Cash on Delivery cooks up every ingredient necessary to produce a delicious farce in the best tradition of a dinner/theatre package, which this theatre’s regular audience loves so well.
Rikki Lawton, playing the central character Eric Swan, has woven a complicated web of deceit to outwit the authorities and claim benefits for an army of fictitious lodgers.
When it all becomes too complicated, he decides to kill them off with a variety of “accidents”. But the resulting mayhem — as real and make-believe characters collide — ensures a hilarious evening of first-class comedy.
The action starts as soon as the curtain rises. Eric begins to panic when a DSS inspector arrives unexpectedly, quickly followed by Sally, a dotty bereavement officer, beautifully played by Anita Graham. Then enter a psychiatrist, an undertaker, and finally a corpse who isn’t really dead (Uncle George, who has been Eric’s accomplice from the start).
As lies and more lies lead to even more confusion, the audience roars with laughter. The action throughout is perfectly timed, so quick that the actors struggle to keep straight faces themselves.
This is farce at its absolute best. The Mill has another winning show, giving their audiences a delicious evening of jolly entertainment.
Saturday, 7 July 2012
EastEnders Wednesday
(and back with EastEnders for two more scenes in a couple of weeks time)
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Cash on Delivery - Review 2
Wednesday 4th July 2012
by Christopher Gray
In the very week that David Cameron declared war on “the benefit scroungers” the Mill at Sonning Dinner Theatre opened its revival of a splendid comedy that fully reveals the profits and perils associated with cashing in on — or in this case fraudulently exploiting — the availability of generous state hand-outs.
Michael Cooney’s 1997 farce Cash on Delivery focuses on Jack the lad East Ender Eric Swan, played with a cheeky charm, a fine sense of comic timing and considerable athleticism by watchable newcomer Rikki Lawton.
During a two-year campaign of peculation, of which his wife Linda (Helen Armes) is in utter ignorance, Eric has netted a fortune — “twenty-five thousand a year, no tax,” he gloats — by making false claims for himself and on behalf of an army of imaginary lodgers: “They just kept giving me all this money.”
Nor is it only money. Physical ailments — alopecia, back problems and the like — allegedly affecting the lodgers and their equally fictitious families have guaranteed a steady supply of wigs, corsets, stockings and outsize brassieres.
A misconstruction put on these when Linda discovers the stash leads her to call in a shrink (played by Brian Godfrey, who also directs) to deal with Eric’s supposed cross-dressing.As it turns out, the only female impersonation we see comes from the Swans’ one genuine lodger, the nervous, nerdish Norman (Nick Wilton). He becomes complicit in Eric’s deception — much against his wishes — with the arrival of a snooping social security inspector (Eric Carte).
Hitherto, Eric’s only partner in crime has been his Uncle George (Michael Kirk), on whom much indignity is heaped during this day of disasters. His misfortunes include — so it appears — that of becoming a corpse, thereby requiring the presence of both a remarkably jovial undertaker (Royce Mills) and a simpering grief counsellor (Anita Graham).
For reasons I cannot begin to explain (far too complicated) Norman’s fiancée (Lynette McMorrough) believes the stretchered stiff to be her beloved, which sets yet more comic business in chain. All that is needed to complete this gloriously silly romp is the arrival of a big-bosomed benefits boss (Felicity Duncan), the dragon every farce requires.
As may have been guessed, Michael Cooney is related to veteran farceur Ray (son, in fact). The creative fecundity he displays here demonstrates he has absorbed all that dad could teach him and more. It’s a hoot.
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Cash on Delivery - Review 1
Cash on Delivery
Published Friday 29 June 2012 by Sheila Tracy
Michael Cooney, who now lives and works in Los Angeles and has several film scripts to his credit, has certainly inherited his father’s talent for writing, having collaborated with Ray Cooney on the hit comedy Tom, Dick and Harry.
When he wrote Cash on Delivery in the mid-1990s it became a big hit in Oslo, to his amazement. Hardly surprising as I spent the first act of this play about a social security scam, mopping up tears of mirth, rating it as one of the most hilarious 60 minutes I have had the good fortune to see on stage.
Recently graduated Rikki Lawton gives an impressive performance as the young landlord, supposedly suffering from gout, playing the social security system for all it’s worth. With the help of Nick Wilton as his lodger, he is up to every trick in the book including a dead body, which proves to be very much alive. Wilton is custom-made for his role and is superb. All is well until the man from the Department of Social Security office arrives with a list of 25 different applications to be signed for, a role played with gusto by Eric Carte. News of a death in the house sees a bereavement counsellor, beautifully played by Anita Graham, introduced to the proceedings.
The star cast of 10 includes another Mill favourite, Royce Mills, with the director Brian Godfrey doubling in a minor role.
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