There is still plenty of comedy mileage in this farce written by two masters of the genre, Ray Cooney and John Chapman.

Not Now Darling first saw the light of day just over 50 years ago with Donald Sinden and Bernard Cribbins in the leading roles.

True, the sight of scantily-dressed young ladies  being hidden in the showroom of their West End Fur Salon by the ever-amorous Gilbert Bodley and his hapless partner Arnold Crouch does not have the same shock effect that it had in 1967, but played at a breakneck speed, there is plenty of fun still to be had.
No one  could accuse director Bruce James and his cast of being short of pace. , as the audience walked out for their interval drinks there were, amongst some of them, distinct signs of ‘Phew I need time to rest and recover’. It would have been even better had the very popular Damian Williams, as the wandering-eyed Gilbert, been a little subtler with more of the dialogue instead of hammering so many lines as if to underline their importance.
Despite this, his proportion of laughs per line was, as usual, very impressive. When he and the ever willing Philip Meeks, in the role of his partner Arnold, combined in comic business there were some vintage farce moments.

Holly Easterbrook and Jessica Day provided the glamour required from the two young ladies whose clothes continually disappeared, but it was Grace Alexander-Scott as the primly-dressed secretary Miss Tipdale who stole the acting award playing the ‘straight man’ with style. When it came to stylish performances there were none better on show than Sarah Whitlock and Richard Colson who made the stock characters of Commander and Mrs Frencham more than just acceptable.
The fact that a cast of 11 is required, and the cost that goes with that, has put more than one company off presenting this play.
So it was nice to find the Bruce James company having enough faith in the support of local theatre goers to cover the cost of presenting this good vintage farce, while  at the same time bringing together a team of players willing to work hard  as an ensemble, something essential to its success. of any farcical comedy.

7/10
Gerry Parker

Nei ráðherra í Borgarleikhúsinu

A week ago I once more went to the theater, this time to see a farce that I had little expectations for. It’s called Out of order (Nei ráðherra!) and is written by Ray Cooney. A few of years ago I saw another play by him, Funny money (Viltu finna milljón) and I really liked that one so I thought Out of order would be great as well. Before it’s premiere it had been hyped up so I was excited to see it but I noticed that the hype was over quickly when people started to see the play. Normally I enjoy farces – they are maybe not the deepest or most meaningful plays around but they usually make you laugh and also the script is well written and the plot well thought out.

My boyfriend and I didn’t particularly like this one though. It’s about a minister in  a government who finds a dead guy in the window of the hotelroom where he is planning to engage in adultery. Normally a farce is built up the same way. Situations and characters are presented, something happens that needs some covering up and as the lies get more and more complicated the caracters get more and more desperate. My main criticism for Out of order is that the audience barely get to know the situation and the characters before the lies start. Only 5-10 minutes into the play the main character and some of the supporting characters get so neurotic that they are shouting out their lines as they run around the stage in panic.  The audience (me) was not ready for this type of frenzy so early on in the play.

The actors were okay and the characters had some funny quirks but it just felt like they were trying too hard. There really isn’t much to say about the lighting or use of sound. The stage was set up as a hotel suite and outside of it was a replica of two buildings in Reykjavik to show where the hotel was placed. The best use of the stage in my opinion was a window to the balcony that was constantly shutting down with a BANG. The best thing about the play was the Icelandic translation. The text was funny and the localization of it was well executed.

Maybe I’m too young to get this play or maybe I’m finally getting some class when it comes to theatre -  in any case I didn’t like this one very much. It gets 2 stars and I can’t really recommend it in itself. It’s always a fun night though to go to the theater.

Tickets are available from the Village Store (The Forge Shop    High Street     Inkberrow    WR7 4DY   01386 792454)

From £6.00 per ticket.

Come along and support our near neighbours!

Yesterday at Misty’s foyer, in the apparently reinvigorated but still frankly pretty ugly Ile de Nantes, I watched an English play in French. I knew it was English, because in the background there was a print of Big Ben, through one of the onstage doors another print was visible of a red double-decker bus, and the ringtone for the desk phone in the play’s office setting was ‘Yellow Submarine’. Which, despite ringing throughout the entire performance, was actually less irritating than the bell in one of my schools: a distorted electric guitar vamp on the theme music from the Pink Panther. I have absolutely no idea why.

We got there a couple of hours early, meeting Misty in the foyer of her foyer and discussing what on earth this should actually be called, and went to the nearest supermarket to buy some incredibly cheap and probably not particularly gourmet wine. A box of TicTacs cost €1 for some reason, which was at least cheaper than the gum. We were vaguely heading towards the converted banana hangar (I know, by which I mean, I have no idea) which is apparently Nantes’ bar-and-clubbing central, but if it was anywhere near us we couldn’t see it, so we went back with the wine and marvelled at Misty’s mini-studio, complete with cooker and proper storage space, as well as a TV and cutlery generously provided by her responsable. It’s a lot nicer than ours, and the lift even works. I don’t think I’d want to leave if I was there; Sophie agrees. It is a bit isolated though, unless those pesky bananas are closer than we think.

The play was a farce called ‘Le Vison Voyageur’ (disclaimer: for the first time in my theatre-going life, I only found out the name at the end of it) by someone called Ray Cooney, who is apparently one of the most famous living English authors with the French public, but has had no real public profile outre-manche since the 1970s. It was fun, light, sub-Carry On stuff about fur coats and concealed nudity. Misty was shocked, though not unpleasantly – apparently no one ever takes their clothes off in Idaho.

I’d say I understood about 70% of the language, some of which was occasionally still in English for reasons I didn’t fully understand, and got most of the jokes. I doubt ‘Le Vison Voyageur’ is going to be a long-standing literary masterpiece, but we got free sangria afterwards and spoke to one of the actors – they’re a professional company who hire the foyer theatre for months at a time, and residents get in for free, which is a pretty sweet deal, though sadly it doesn’t look like anyone bothers to go. Other than him we didn’t manage to integrate with any other French people, who seemed to be keeping themselves to themselves, the one exception as we left being an older woman who might well have been his mother. I chatted some shit about Yasmina Reza, and afterwards felt like a dick for doing so.

So today I made it to foyer breakfast for only the second time. A guy called Joachim who does something vaguely connected to beauty treatments said ‘Bonjour’ to me as he walked past; when he sat down next to me I reciprocated. He looked at me with some confusion, and said ‘I already said that.’ I then proceeded to forget his name and job, despite him having told me them on Wednesday night, which is why I know them again now. Not a good start to our friendship.

At 10:00 I wait in the staff-room for Anne, who I’m going to my first French class with. She runs around and seems worried enough for two of us, so I manage to mostly avoid the Christian-thrown-to-the-lions feeling, and as it happens the lions are nice enough. We’re in the salle des conferences, watching her students do a roleplay about a fat video games addict whose parents decide to send him to what is repeatedly referred to as ‘The Dutch Clinic’. It transpires that this phrase comes from an article on which the whole thing is based. I tell her that I’m laughing because it makes me think of Dignitas. Halfway through the subsequent explanation I realise this sense of humour might not transfer; luckily she seems to find it equally hilarious.

I don’t talk to any of the class in much detail, but they all seem fun – most of the roleplays demonstrate an awareness of World of Warcraft (not that I personally know anything about it) and one of them ends with a girl with a rucksack shoved up her top shouting ‘I’ve never had sex and I’m 21, 21, 21!’ The third ends with two people jumping repeatedly over a table on which the vice-principal’s borrowed laptop is precariously balanced. Anne assures me they won’t do any damage. We chat for a while about our longer-term projects for the class – apparently most of her previous assistants had no interest in drama, books, or anything much, so she seems happy to have me. She says ‘hitherto’, having learnt a lot of her English for 18th-century novels, and tells me has translated a book of letters between William and John Butler Yeats. Which is pretty cool.

Later, I dodge through mercilessly heavy rain to introduce myself to Agnes’s class at my second school – they’re a year younger, but still have decent English, and obviously it would be unprofessional to go into any real detail. Both groups I meet think ‘do you have any brothers or sisters’ is the most important question with which they could open proceedings; my hedging answer seems to slightly disappoint. They take part in a debate about advertising, the most memorable part of which is one cheeky chappy saying ‘Fucking publicity!’ and me having to conceal what I’m laughing at when Agnes hasn’t heard.

On the way back, the rain is even worse. I don’t have a raincoat, obviously. I get even wetter looking for a bakery and eventually buy a back of twelve strawberry tartelettes from an Asian supermarket, a snack so moreish I’ve eaten six of them already and might soon be in the same shape as a patient in the Dutch clinic. Then I fuck around for an hour trying to download a Live WordCount app for Open Office to kid myself then once I’ve put it off long enough I’m going to work on my novel. Then it’s 6:00, and I do this instead. Application is a problem.

On the plus side, Sophie helped me fill in my forms for Sécurité Sociale and the MGEN top-up health insurance, meaning that in a couple of weeks time I can legally get ill without paying for it. She also gave me the number of someone I can approach to sign up as my designated ‘medecin traitant’, solving the problem of me clearly not already knowing any French doctors. As paperwork goes, this is definitely the better kind of start.

Did you know that The Ullenhall Players were performing ‘It Runs in the Family’ on May 5^th in 2001 (Ullenhall Village Hall), 2005 (The Palace Theatre, Redditch) & 2010 (The Palace Theatre, Redditch)?

(It just Runs & Runs! – ed)

10th May 2010

It runs in the Family – Yet again a wonderful night out. We saw it first time around and we laughed as much this time as we did then. Look forward to the next one. Well done everyone – great show

Alan & Jan Percivall

_______________________________________________

10th May 2010

My boyfriend and I came to see your fabulous performance on Saturday evening. We laughed so much that we literally hurt by the end of the 2 hours. The quality of the acting was superb and on par with any professional production we have seen. It was our first time to see The Ullenhall Players and we could not believe that we were watching an amateur group. Special praise must go to the two leads of Dr Mortimore and Dr Bonney. The parts were played brilliantly by the two actors and the words were faultless. The comic timing throughout was breathtaking – we are converts! Thank you all for a superb night’s entertainment. When is your next production?!

Emma Chadwick

Neil Gardner as Leslie and Jenny Roberts as Mrs Bonny

8th May 2010

John & Cynthia Hill

We saw ‘It Runs In The Family’ on Friday 7th May 2010 and it was, as is usual, a brilliant evenings entertainment. We could easily have watched it again, and would have if time had permitted. As always we look forward to your next production.

———————————————————————————————

8th May 2010

Brenda Chambers

Saw ‘It Runs In The Family’ on Thurday – our first experience of the Ullenhall Players. Loved it – it should carry a health warning – or at least the advice ‘not to wear mascarra’! I look forward to future productions.

———————————————————————————————-

7th May 2010

Richard & Pam Lewis

Another fantastic performance from you all. Pablo you are a true comedy star. Well directed and acted by you. Kind Regards Richard & Pam

———————————————————————————————–

It’s almost time for the last performance – book now to avoid dissapointment!

Palace Theatre Box Office: 01527 65203

In spite of  smaller audiences compared with Wednesday’s virtual sell out the Players made the stage their own and at times bought those in the auditorium to tears.

All credit goes to Jeff Gill as the Police Sergeant who received a black eye from an over enthusiastic encounter with a soda syphon during the second act on Thursday! Jeff went on to complete the entire performance with a large blue lump on his cheek – WHAT A TROOPER!  The Players – as professional as ever – managed to get Jeff’s somewhat obvious injury into the script for the next performance.

Jeff Gill, Steve Brookes and Pablo Raybould with the soda syphon!

Thanks to Rebecca Hancox for this comment left in UP Stage today (8th May):

This is the 5th year that we have been to see you all and yet again you never fail to deliver, my husband and I laughed from start to finish, slick, witty, fast paced and the trademark 2 minutes BRILLIANT! It was a shame that there was such a small but very appreciative audience on the Friday night, people need to know what they are missing! Keep up the good work

There are still tickets available for tonight – call the Palace Theatre on 01527 65203

Wed May 5 21:47:09 2010
From: Nikki Stearman
…and another year I attend, with another friend in tow who hasnt stopped thanking me all the way home for taking her! Fantastic guys, brilliant for a first night and sooooo great to have Pablo back on the stage…you had me crying!!!!

———————————————————————————–

Thu May 6 08:38:05 2010

From: Sue Newman

What can i say? Absolutely brilliant !! Just what entertainment should be. We have been coming to your productions for the last couple of years and last night ‘dragged’ along a couple of friends …. wife keen, husband was expected to fall asleep, but hey, that would be ok …… on the contrary when i glanced along the row of seats all i could see were tears (of laughter) rolling from their eyes. After they thanked us so much for the invite …. thank you UP for your brilliant performance.

————————————————————————————

Thu May 6 08:39:58 2010

From: Jane Lloyd

Thank you so much for an evening of laughter – absolutely fantastic!!! Genius timing, facial expressions and innuendo. What moree can I say Bravo!

————————————————————————————

Thu May 6 08:46:33 2010

From: Dave Rix

Hi there

My wife and I went to see the play last night at the Palace theatre in Redditch and was very impressed. It took me back to the great sitcoms of the 70s and 80s that i happily grew up watching on TV – mainly as there were no PCs, playstations or Wii’s around in those days. It flowed very well with quite literally a laugh a minute – I haven’t chuckled so much in ages. Thanks for giving me a fab night out. Have fun all

Dave

———————————————————————————–

Thu May 6 13:02:41 2010

From: Elaine Clarke

My husband and I came to see your latested production at the Palace Theatre last night and we have not laughed so much in years!! We thought the production was fantastic and very professiona. This is the second production we have seen and hope to see many more. Keep up the good work!

————————————————————————————-

Fri May 7 08:57:32 2010

From: Molly & Gerry Burbridge

Your performance of– IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY– was superb. Have not laughed so much for a long time Keep up the good work.

————————————————————————————-

IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY – PALACE THEATRE REDDITCH.

Tickets are still available for Friday (7th) & Staurday (8th).

Theatre Box Office: 01527 65203

"The Curtain Call"

“The Curtain Call” – John Mills, Malcolm Steward, Martin Shuttleworth, Alex Steward, Steve Brookes, Pablo Raybould, Jane Smith, Lynda Gill, Jeff Gill, Neil Gardner, Jenny Roberts, Rachel Gill

"At the Window"

“At the Window” – Pablo Raybould, Louise Smith, Lynda Gill, Steve Brookes and Neil Gardner

Lynda Gill as Matron

The Players have won critical acclaim in the Midlands for their brilliant portrayal of some of the best farces and comedies from British writers.  Critics have applauded the Player’s professional productions which have been envied by other amateur groups.

Make your way to the wonderfully restored Palace Theatre in Redditch to witness this year’s spectacle. The first night is almost sold out, so get in touch with the box office – there are still tickets available for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Palace Theatre box office is on 01527 65203.

Steve Brookes and Alex Steward playing David & Rosemary Mortimer

Pablo Raybould, John Mills and Jeff Gill

"Your Mother approves?!"

Today is a very sad day. It is our last performance of the fantastically hilarious Ray Cooney farce “Caught in the Net”. We have all worked very hard to get to this stage and it had been well worth the effort.

Thursday saw a very raucous audience. They were with us from the beginning and immediately “got” the two family set up. They were literally rolling in the aisles. There was not a dry seat…I mean eye in the house (although the cushions had been removed on Friday night,  just in case!?!)

Friday saw a very different audience. They weren’t as loud with their laughter to start with, however once they warmed up, you could not stop them. They laughed at lots of lines that we hadn’t had any reaction to before, which was really great.

"Go on, ask Dad"

Tonight we have nearly a full house. We have to make a good impression tonight so people will remember us and come again.

My congratulations go out to Godfrey Forder who as the Director, made this fabulous play come to life and without him we would not be where we are now. A triumph on your debut Godfrey! It all comes down to concentration in the end! We just have to wait to see what the press say about us……if they come.

It is 2.30am and I have just arrived home from our after show party. The last performance went so well. There was a full house, we almost had to turn people away but we managed to squeeze them in. The audience was brilliant. They were laughing from the first few lines and continued ceaselessly throughout. There was a lot of very positive feedback from the audience both during the interval and as they were leaving. This will be a much talked about play and has set a high standard for our next production. I hope the new members of our audience spread the word round their friends and bring them along next time.

"Visitor?... Well I suggest you entertain your young lady upstairs!" (Note the saucepan....!)

I have arrived home still on a high from the performance. I will sleep well tonight. Tomorrow will be a sad day. I will miss “Mad” Mary. I rather enjoyed chasing after people with my carving knife and banging on locked doors although my hand was getting a bit sore along with my throat from shouting too much. Others will have enjoyed my varied facial expressions throughout, my screaming hysterics, my wild dishevelled hair on my final entrance and also something to do with a saucepan…although I cannot reveal what that particular thing was those who saw it will know what I mean immediately.

On opening the local paper today (3rd October 2009) I go straight to the “Entertainment” pages to find a great review by Ronald Afredson. Find the original at: http://www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/entertainment/Review-Caught-in-the-Net.5698521.jp

"One Tea!"

With John away Stanley is left to think up ever-more unlikely excuses and reasons why the children should be kept apart and Nick Moon excels in the manic role he is forced to play.
Not only is it a case of keeping the children apart but also the wives, Barbara (Michelle Moon) in Streatham and Mary (Natalie Beams) in Wimbledon.
In the best traditions of the Whitehall farce, confusion is heaped on unlikely occurrence until John is reduced to playing a corpse rolled up in a carpet and Stanley is dripping with perspiration clad in a towel.

"I don't want a Doctor"

Added to all of which Stanley’s dad turns up expecting Stanley to take him to Felixstowe on holiday. Colin Atkinson is perfect in the role and steals many of the scenes in which he inadvertently adds to the hilarity with his deafness and confusion.
The performances of John as he becomes ever more desperate to maintain the status quo and his two wives as they try to find out quite what is going on are splendidly played.
To reveal the denouement would be to spoil the story for anyone who has never seen the play, but everything reaches a satisfactory conclusion after a spell of angry kitchen knife-wielding by the enraged Mary and revelations all round.
Godfrey Forder is to be congratulated on what can only be described as a tour de farce for drilling his excellent cast not only in words and moves but also in timing and the speed of movement around a compact eight-door set which doubled up as the living rooms of both houses, sometimes at the same time.
The effect of seeing both house telephones plus a mobile phone in use in the same few square feet of stage is dramatic and entertaining.
There was not a foot or word out of place nor an opportunity for comic effect left unmilked and a series of enthusiastic audiences left no-one in doubt as to their enjoyment and appreciation.

Final Curtain

How can John keep his two families from meeting?

Rehearsals are well underway for our next production. This Autumn we are performing Ray Cooney’s farce “Caught in the Net”. This is the sequel to “Run for your Wife”. I play the part of Mary, whose husband John is married to two people. Mary and John’s daughter Vicky finds a friend on the Internet and they want to meet due to the fact that they have so much in common, including Fathers with the same name and profession. This friend happens to the son of John’s other marriage. The rest of the play revolves around the two kids trying desperately to meet and John with the aid of his Lodger Stanley, trying to keep them apart.

The rehearsals have been extremely fun so far, with all of the “business” that has to be worked out and having to learn our lines quickly to be able to attempt these moves. It is a very “prop-heavy” play and the sooner we can have these in use the better. Once we have the set completed that will make life a lot easier. We still have a few weeks left before we have to start panicking about the performances at the end of September, however as usual that time will slip away very quickly.

We have a peice in the local paper today which is well overdue. I hope we manage to rack up the ticket sales now. A little miffed that several of us are not mentioned by name however it does have a great picture (the one on this post!)

By Ray Cooney

Directed by Ian Dickens

Company: Ian Dickens Productions

Venue: Connaught Theatre

Date: Thursday 4th September 2008

This is a very well-written farce with lots of complications, so you have to pay attention to remember who’s said what to whom. We’d seen it back in the early 1980s, with Eric Sykes in the lead role, and enjoyed it enormously. We were keen to see how well it had survived the years.

The plot concerns a taxi driver called John Smith, who has two wives happily living a few minutes’ drive apart in London. Neither knows about the other, and John’s worked very hard to keep it that way. Unfortunately, one night he helps an old woman who’s being mugged, getting a bash on the head himself in the process, and from the woman he’s trying to help! The next morning, delivered to the ‘wrong’ house from the hospital, he finds that he’s a hero, and if his picture gets into the papers, his double life will become exceedingly single and behind bars to boot! His neighbour from the upstairs flat, Stanley Gardner, helps him out as best he can once John’s explained the situation, and all sorts of mayhem ensues. The police are already involved, as the Mrs Smith from Streatham has reported her husband missing, while the Wimbledon police were involved because of the foiled mugging, so two police officers have to be kept satisfied. Not an easy job. Then the telephone number of the Streatham house is left on a piece of paper at the Wimbledon house, so calls are going back and forth with massive confusion and lots of laughs as a result.

The set shows the two houses simultaneously, with separate front doors, and combined living rooms. It was a little confusing at times, but on the whole I could remember who was where. Thank god the cast kept track! The whole lot end up in Streatham, where eventually John Smith confesses all to the police. Trouble is, after all the stories he and Stanley have been spinning, they don’t believe him! End of play.

This cast did very well, and we both enjoyed ourselves a lot. David Callister, a stalwart of Ian Dickens productions, played John Smith, with Mervyn Hayes as Stanley. The gay hairdresser from the flat above the Streatham place was played by Paul Henry, and the entire cast did a great job keeping up the pace. This farce has definitely got the legs to run and run.

This one caught his attention. It seems to have 10 production photographs in it which is quite an achievement in a poster. It’s probably a farce judging by the buttocks. And it would seem to feature the cast taking their curtain call. All most curious.

Perhaps some day all theatre posters will look like this:

At a guess, this was Vladimir Mashkov’s staging of Ray Cooney’s popular comedy No. 13 starring Avangard Leontyev and Yevgeny Mironov at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater.

But what a lot of words! Translation please, Mr Morrison.

Comedy’s a funny thing. For every lover of Fawlty Towers there’s someone else passionate about My Family. The excitement generated by a new Will Ferrell film at the mulitplex for one person might be matched by the next’s anticipation of a Woody Allen retrospective screening nearby.

The Lyceum’s new production of Dario Fo’s Trumpets and Raspberries will no doubt incite mixed emotions in audiences over the coming weeks, as word of its madcap humour spreads.

The play opens in a futuristic operating theatre somewhere in Edinburgh in 2011, a time where David Cameron is Prime Minister and Menzies Campbell has been assassinated by extremists. The head of Fiat, Sir John Lamb, has been just been kidnapped, while factory worker Tony has been working on more than just his production line with a female friend in the back of a Cinquecento.

Following a car crash near Tony’s parking spot, we are introduced to a heavily bandaged man lying in his hospital bed. As surgeons, led by a deliriously OTT Professor (Steven McNicoll) busy around the body, background details start to be filled in by the patients “wife” (Kath Howden).

Rather than hit the ground running, the first ten minutes drag, with the audience still unsure what style the production is aiming for. The introduction of Jimmy Chisolm’s Tony is the boost the play needs, his buoyancy finally pitching the right tone for others to follow.

Recent Lyceum productions have played fast and loose with traditional storytelling, with Six Character’s in Search of an Author introducing key characters from outwith the proscenium arch. Trumpets reprises this trick, though I’ll not spoil it by telling exactly how.

From here it’s a bumpy ride, with confusion, collusion and corruption taking place in various quarters as the plot takes various leaps into the ridiculous.

If the first half is intent on setting the scene, the second runs with the premise, recalling various Ray Cooney farces in it’s execution.

One gripe is that the final 20 minutes seem tacked on, as if there was space to fill, and the drag of the opening scene returns to mute the ending. Maybe this will vanish as the run continues.

The cast rise admirably to the challenge of staging a form of theatre that, although never going out of style, has perhaps never exactly been in vogue. Much corpsing and ad-libbing was in evidence this opening night, something forgiven by an audience being carried along on a wave of fast gags and a script which makes no attempt to be taken seriously.

This is entertainment, pure and simple.

In a climate where the much discussed credit crisis threatens to halt spending on anything other than the bare necessities, and in a city where a new tram system threatens to cause grief to residents for the next few years (a topic mentioned more than once in Trumpets), an evening of out-and-out fun is to be welcomed.

Review by Jonathan Melville

Trumpets and Raspberries runs from 18 April – 10 May at the Royal Lyceum – visit the Lyceum website for full details.

Read Mhairi MacLeod’s review of Trumpets and Raspberries.

Read the itsonitsgone.com preview.

Photos by Alan McCreadie.

The production marks the sixth year for Hedgerow’s Annual Summer Farce series. It’s directed by Andrew Chown & Penelope Reed and runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm; Sundays at 2pm.

Hedgerow Theatre | 64 Rose Valley Rd – Media, PA
7/13 – 9/9, Thu – Sat @ 8pm, Sun @ 2pm
Discounts available through the Philly Fun Guide for select shows June 13 – 19

Once in a while, a movie comes along that redefines the way you look at celluloid entertainment, if only for a short time. When flashy directors spend millions soaking their movies with state-of-the-art special effects, it supposedly increases the entertainment value of their work. Takes flicks like “The Matrix”, “The 6th Day” and “Independence Day”. I can honestly say that the entertainment ascertained from all the above movies paled in comparison to dismal B-movie “Jack Frost 2″.

Yes, you heard me right. “Jack Frost 2″ is utterly dismal. It is a B-movie in every sense of the phrase, looks like it was made with an expensive camcorder and stars actors who could very well be your neighbours. But despite this, it still managed to make me laugh so hard I thought I’d cough my lungs up right there.

The premise of “Jack Frost 2″ follows similarly to the 1997 prequel. In the original, a serial killer is killed in a car wreck, but he somehow mutates into a snowman and seeks revenge on the sheriff who caught him. The sequel sees a lab expirement go wrong, and once again Jack Frost’s remains mutate and he goes on a killing spree on a tropical island where our unfortunate Sheriff Tiler (Christopher Allport) and his wife are attending their friends wedding party.

But the beauty in this movie is not the storyline (as brilliant as a killer snowman on a tropical island is), or the script (which although generally awful, has some humorous and very witty lines). It could be attributed to any of a number of things. Perhaps the memorably bad acting and performances. Maybe the laughable special-effects and settings. The complete lack of editing, direction and production also help make this movie unforgettable. And finally the injection of Jack’s “children” – a blatant rip-off of Gremlins, but hilarious all the same.

Not everyone is going to view this movie the way I did. Some will probably switch it off after 15 minutes. But if you like complete and utter rubbish, this is as good as it gets.

How about “Jack Frost 3: Jack vs Worzel Gummidge”.

Once in a while, a movie comes along that redefines the way you look at celluloid entertainment, if only for a short time. When flashy directors spend millions soaking their movies with state-of-the-art special effects, it supposedly increases the entertainment value of their work. Takes flicks like “The Matrix”, “The 6th Day” and “Independence Day”. I can honestly say that the entertainment ascertained from all the above movies paled in comparison to dismal B-movie “Jack Frost 2″.

Yes, you heard me right. “Jack Frost 2″ is utterly dismal. It is a B-movie in every sense of the phrase, looks like it was made with an expensive camcorder and stars actors who could very well be your neighbours. But despite this, it still managed to make me laugh so hard I thought I’d cough my lungs up right there.

The premise of “Jack Frost 2″ follows similarly to the 1997 prequel. In the original, a serial killer is killed in a car wreck, but he somehow mutates into a snowman and seeks revenge on the sheriff who caught him. The sequel sees a lab expirement go wrong, and once again Jack Frost’s remains mutate and he goes on a killing spree on a tropical island where our unfortunate Sheriff Tiler (Christopher Allport) and his wife are attending their friends wedding party.

But the beauty in this movie is not the storyline (as brilliant as a killer snowman on a tropical island is), or the script (which although generally awful, has some humorous and very witty lines). It could be attributed to any of a number of things. Perhaps the memorably bad acting and performances. Maybe the laughable special-effects and settings. The complete lack of editing, direction and production also help make this movie unforgettable. And finally the injection of Jack’s “children” – a blatant rip-off of Gremlins, but hilarious all the same.

Not everyone is going to view this movie the way I did. Some will probably switch it off after 15 minutes. But if you like complete and utter rubbish, this is as good as it gets.

How about “Jack Frost 3: Jack vs Worzel Gummidge”.