Gamlingay (main menu) Service and Utilities In the November 2000 Issue Leading page Village Diary News from St Mary's Church Services - Gamlingay, Everton and Hatley St George News from the Baptists Community Corner Church Mouse Parish Council News Vandalism and Graffiti Gamlingay Art Exhibition and Heritage Weekend Outside Edge - Gamlingay Players Neighbourhood Watch Host Gamlingay Village College Heart for You Poetry Hawk Poetry Robin Poetry The Gunpowder Plot Yew Clippings are valuable! Stepping Stones Green Wellie What’s On?

OUTSIDE EDGE GAMLINGAY PLAYERS by Kirsty Allen The Gamlingay Players treated us to a thoroughly enjoyable and lively evening's entertainment with Outside Edge. A talented and well-rehearsed cast managed to exploit the humour in Richard Harris' well observed and sharply amusing play. Moreover, the Players should be complimented for having managed to put a new slant on a work which is widely known through television and stage performances. The action of the play takes place in real time at the cricket pavilion on the afternoon of a village match. As the play unfolds, the audience gradually learns about the rather complicated relationships which bind the characters together - and which also threaten to blow them apart! Indeed, the unfolding offstage drama on the cricket pitch, is nothing compared with the bedlam in the pavilion and the unravelling lives of the characters. The Players deserve some considerable credit for producing such well defined and sustained characterisations. It must have been tempting to resort to caricatures; but this temptation was almost entirely resisted. Instead, the characters were human and rather sympathetic - albeit grotesque to an extent of which Harris would surely have approved. Special plaudits must go to Jan Cooper (Miriam) and Graham Virgo (Roger) who held the play together with tightly controlled comic performances. Virgo’s timing was impeccable and he developed Roger's enigmatic and contradictory character with admirable panache. I particularly enjoyed the comic effect of his reactions to an imagined cricket match; upstaging perhaps - but entirely justified and brilliantly communicated! Cooper unfolded the character of Miriam to poignant effect and laced the comedy with a nice edge of anger. But it is invidious to single out anyone in this strong cast. Amanda Jones (Maggie) and Ian Parker (Kevin) provided a visually and verbally comic duo: an exceedingly clever bit of casting. Parker emphasised all of Kevin's vulnerability without being pathetic; while Jones embodied Maggie's maternal sexuality in every movement. Fran Sharp (Dennis) played a convincingly lecherous old codger while Colin Carroll (Bob) conveyed the comically edgy misery of the serial philander. Clare Parker (Ginnie) weaved her character skilfully and humorously between languorous ennui and hurt anger. Susan Lucas made a real tour de force out of what was an essentially cameo part (Sharon); I particularly appreciated her fabulously funny agonised wait for urgent access to the bathroom! Mark Young (Alex) embodied the self-obsessed solicitor. Mention must also be made of a most impressively designed and dressed set which gave the cast a very satisfying multi-dimensional graduated acting space. It was an altogether impressive production - which the rest of a first night audience clearly enjoyed as much as I did.