Skip to main content

Review of They Came From Mars (Farndale Avenue) at The Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

"They Came From Mars and landed outside the Farndale Avenue Church in time for the townswomen's guild's coffee morning" is probably the longest play title out there and currently I reckon the strangest play that I have seen. Having said that and with no prior knowledge of what the play entailed, it turned out that it was much more familiar to me than I first thought.

Written by David McGillivray and Walter J Zerlin Jnr, They Came From Mars is part of a series of plays otherwise known as Farndale Avenue. They centre around a women's guild attempts of producing a play despite a general lack of everything including sets, props, abilities to act and men.

Not long into the play and after a gloriously entertaining audience participation introduction from Mrs Reece (Adrian Wyman) it slowly became clear to me that I had seen many of the ideas before. It is true that Mischief Theatre through their two Goes Wrong plays have refined a failed production to both timing and physical perfection but here in this play is the gestation of many of those ideas nearly thirty years before.

It is both perfect and dangerous at the same for an amateur group to take on such a playm however the Playhouse have more or less nailed it. One of my favourites was the official only gent of the evening, Graham Lee, playing the unwilling toothy vicar Gordon with relish. Channeling Dick Emery to the extreme and keeping that almost perfect voice throughout, he managed to be funny no matter what he was saying. Maggie Holland was also great fun as Norah, despite being mostly drugged up for much of the play and being pushed, carried and cajoled around the stage by the other cast members, she still managed to make the character work, even in a sparkly wig.

Di Wyman made a very successful transition from brother to sister, garnering all the ridiculousness out of the situation. Patricia Gletherow's Felicity was also great entertainment but very softly played. She did manage to be responsible for two of the biggest laughs of the night, first bent over the side board (I had no idea where to look) and then that magic incorrect phaser moment, made even the more better by some out of place audience participation. This moment was superbly fielded and ad-libed by the star of the show.

Adrian Wyman brought in at three days notice due to illness had the enviable task of being a man playing a lady playing a man. I may never write that line again. Despite script in hand he was quite brilliant as Mrs Reece playing the broken nailed Professor. Batty and bizarre doesn't cover it.


The set was suitably inept (to be clear this is good) and there was no doubt that I would be won over by the War of the Worlds music being played over the very funny space travel scene. It was all created with the right edge of bad and good as required from director Clare Brittain.

So quite clearly an utterly insane two hours of "drama" with very spirited performances from all the cast. It is not the best I have seen at the Playhouse by a long way, however somehow it still became one of the most entertaining.

Performance reviewed: Wednesday 16th March, 2016 at the Playhouse Theatre, Northampton

They Came From Mars continues at the Playhouse Theatre, Northampton until Saturday 19th March, 2016. For full details visit their website at http://www.theplayhousetheatre.net/


Popular posts from this blog

Review of Benidorm Live at Milton Keynes Theatre, Milton Keynes

I arrived at Milton Keynes Theatre to see this touring stage version of ITV comedy hit Benidorm with a distinct lack of knowledge. Having never seen the show, my information stretched as far as knowing it was set in a holiday resort in Spain (the title helps there), and that the humour generally resorted to the cruder end of the spectrum. However, having graced the screens for ten years, it was clear that Derren Litten's show had garnered quite a following, and indeed it was clear from the reception of the audience on the night, that this following was pretty much filling the theatre. The plot, such as it is for this stage show, is very much drafted from an episode of Fawlty Towers , and made a great deal more adult with its humour. The hotel manager, Joyce Temple-Savage (a sharp performance by Sherrie Hewson) gets wind that a hotel inspector is in, and the scene is set for seeking them out and all the obvious cases of mistaken identity. It's thin and doesn't fill

Review of The Time Machine at Royal & Derngate (Royal), Northampton

As the title suggests, Original Theatre’s The Time Machine , importantly subtitled “A Comedy”, takes the 1895 novella by classic science fiction writer H. G. Wells of the same name as its source material. However, while the name is on the show, those expecting a straight, or even, as suggested, comedic full version of the story, will be disappointed, as this often drifts, like the machine of the title, out of control from the source material. What we do have though is a tremendously thrilling couple of hours of entertainment, where the unexpected, is very much at every turn, and indeed at times, even unexpected for the actors on stage. Original Theatre’s  The Time Machine  takes the form of a play within a play, here all three of the actors in the production are pretending to be playing themselves playing several characters within the story. This allows for much of the staple of plays that go wrong to rear their head, including dysfunctional scenery and repeated sequences, here used in

Review of UoN Fringe 2019: Working For The Man by Naked Truth Theatre at The Platform Club, Northampton

When looking at the prospect of the Fringe performance Working For The Man , it is slightly difficult to work out who is the bravest person involved in this remarkable one performer, one audience member show set totally within or around the edges of a car. I guess I would in my case, say myself, but it takes some daring for performer Ellie Lomas of Naked Truth Theatre to also create a piece that offers the boldness that it does. Working for the Man is perhaps unsurprisingly about the sex trade, and explores exploitation and how, or if, prostitution is taken as a serious profession. It involves no live audio dialogue from performer Ellie Lomas, instead, she inhabits a purely physical performance, that is progressed by the use of a pair of headphones which you are given at the start. Across this audio are instructions of what to do. "Get in the car", "sit in the middle seat in the back", "open the glove compartment" etc, as you move to different areas