Enjoy a night out at Shakers Wine Bar - laughter guaranteed
- 6 hours ago
- 2 min read
Shakers: Under New Management. Performed by Tread the Boards at The Attic Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from 2-12 July. Directed by Andrew Woolley.
Review by Charles Essex
It’s Friday night. Glad rags on and the weekend starts. Where better to forget your troubles than Shakers, the nightclub with plastic palm trees in a run-down northern town with unemployment and closing shops and industry. It is busy and we meet staff members and numerous punters, convincingly evoked by Tread the Boards A-Team of female actors, Abigail Drennan, Martha Allen-Smith and Cassandra Wilson.
Behind the bar, there is banter between the girls, with humour and teasing to help to alleviate the fatigue and the frustration of dealing with a wide variety of customers, whom we meet as the evening wears on. Abigail, Martha and Cassandra demonstrate their skills, as they flawlessly switch between characters. Inevitably we meet boorish oafs, trying to show off their physiques accompanied by embarrassing unsubtle innuendo and gestures. A group of teachers, out for a friend’s birthday, bemoan their roles, but an encounter with three of their Year 11 students skilfully oscillates between the two groups.
We hear inane conversation between ex-public-school types, and pretentious name-dropping conversation of a post-theatre crowd. Writers John Godber and Jane Thornton have an ear for the casual exchanges between friends and acquaintances. This is contrasted with a very working-class couple (surprisingly Brummie) who mispronounce the items on the menu. A trendy couple, unaware that they take their entitlement and affluence for granted, irritate the staff with their posturing over what to order. Little do they know what they are getting, as Abigail’s exposé of the chef’s culinary habits makes the audience cringe.
Intermittently Abigail, Martha and Cassandra speak to the audience as a group, in rhyming couplets. Director Andrew Woolley cleverly uses lighting to highlight one or more of them as they speak to the fourth wall. In the first half we learn facts about their lives, but after the interval the three-bar staff start to reveal more about themselves, with soliloquies of frustrations, disappointments and aspirations. Tension and anger between two of them was well executed.
The choice of music and the rise and fall of its volume astutely highlighted the different scenes. There were many laugh out loud moments with clever dialogue and over-the-top portrayal of different male customers. This is not just a simple gender transposition of Gober’s better known play Bouncers but tackles important issues of women’s lives and vulnerabilities. Despite the poignancy of concerns raised, superb acting make this a show not to miss – it is thought provoking but lots of laughter is guaranteed!
Tickets from www.theattictheatre.co.uk
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