REVIEW

MR AND MRS NOBODY

< CHARLES and Carrie Pooter are very much like Frinton Summer Theatre – reassuringly British.

A couple from an era long gone, and yet who occupy a place dear in our hearts today, they could be any married couple from any place in history.

Bickering over jobs that haven’t been done around the house, worrying what the boss or well-to-do people think about them and watching the pennies, Keith Waterhouse’s play is like a cross between Terry and June and Keeping Up Appearances.

It’s actually an adaptation of a very famous Victorian comic novel entitled Diary of a Nobody, which was originally published in Punch and has been embraced by the great British public ever since.

It doesn’t make any deep and meaningful points about life, it doesn’t aim to shock, it just serves up amusing vignette after vignette with whimsy and plenty of humour.

Throughout this season, Frinton has proved what a class corp of actors it has at its disposal, and Kerry Owen and Harry Gostelow certainly maintained that very high standard to the end.

I particularly liked Harry’s Charles singing Gilbert and Sullivan without all the words and Kerry as Carrie with an obsession for a Welham’s Ice Safe, the fridge of its day.

Throw in rain-soaked holidays by the seaside, lovesick offspring and too much booze, and it’s as British as afternoon tea before a Benjamin Britten concert at the Proms.

Rattling along at a speedy pace, the play was over all to quickly and it was time to raise a glass to the team behind Frinton Summer Theatre and look forward to another season next year when the theatre celebrates 70 years of entertaining audiences.

Judging by the packed out McGrigor Hall, as well as the quality of the shows, it looks like staying that way for many years to come.

Mr and Mrs Nobody, Frinton Summer Theatre, McGrigor Hall, Ashlyns Road, Frinton.

Until Saturday

Phone 07905 589792