Celebration

Celebration
By Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall. Stirling Players Inc (SA). Stirling Community Theatre. 13-28 September, 2019.

Weddings and funerals have each provided extremely fertile ground for storytellers and dramatists down through the ages, owing to the propensity of these occasions for bringing together people with deep emotional connections to each other, then letting us see how those connections are tested and how those emotions are stirred.

Celebrationis a piece of theatre that, in its two-part structure, rather neatly demonstrates the way in which a wedding and a funeral - at both of which most of the same attendees are present – can contrast as well as complement each other. In the case of this show, one character who is present for the wedding is only able to attend the funeral as the body in the coffin, while at least one other character’s unexpected introduction in the second half is key to accessing the drama that unfolds…

This production of Celebration demonstrates that there are times when it can really pay to have faith in a show’s potential to improve after the interval. Act One is, by and large, a frustrating experience, populated by talented performers whom one hopes and expects will create memorable characters up there on the Stirling stage. Instead, the generally prosaic and pedestrian dialogue is delivered with a combination of overly thick accents and noticeably dull pacing from too many of the cast, while being further hampered by the seeming lack of a truly compelling centre in the script to draw us into the experience and pull us through to the end.

Fortunately, once Act Two establishes its modus operandi, an appreciable shape and structure start to appear, and it becomes unexpectedly easy to be emotionally moved at the twists of fate that transpire between these flawed, recognisable, ultimately loveable characters.

Penni Hamilton-Smith and Esther Michelsen offer the two most impressively stand-out performances, lifting the energy and interest levels from virtually the moment of their first entrances.

Celebrationis, in some ways, an unusual and challenging piece of theatre, and in other ways, a show that can feel, on occasion, too much the product of a far-away time and place to really be worth reviving in 2019.

Ultimately, though, perseverance is rewarded, however modestly. The tapestry of human foibles and imperfect personalities is worth sticking with, because of how successfully the ensemble cast manage, by the end, to convince us that these kind of people really do exist out there somewhere in the real world, and that they’re worth shining a little light on.

Anthony Vawser

Photographer: Mark Anolak

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