Bishopstoke Players
Durley Memorial Hall, Durley
Hannah-Cait Harrison
28 September 2023
My Thursday evening this week was taken up by “Dirty Dusting”, the most recent outing from The Bishopstoke Players.
The play caught my attention when it was first proposed to me, for its hilarious premise. Three octogenarian cleaning ladies, who are about to lose their jobs, decide to start operating a telephone sex line, in order to make ends meet, and the script did not disappoint. It’s littered with double entendres that the best cleaning polish couldn’t erase and had a slew of one-liners that had me laughing up a storm.
I was a little disappointed by the show itself however, as the energy was sucked out of the show every time a line was messed up, and sadly it happened so often, that it put a bit of a dampener on things. When these things happen (and they, of course, do in any show), my advice would be not to loop back a few lines each time, but to cover the mistake by continuing on and saying things like “I’ve forgotten my line” or “I don’t know what I was going to say next” every couple of minutes, and the actor’s over-reliance on the prompt, made for an uncomfortable evening in places.
That being said, the three women in the shared lead roles of Gladys, Elsie and Olive all delivered laugh-out-loud lines, at least once, so it was enjoyable at times.
My star of the show has to go to Katie Pink who played Elsie, as she was larger than life, had cracking comic timing and really knew how to milk comedy out of everything she did, including operating a wheelie chair in such a way that I cackled.
I’d definitely be up for giving this show a second viewing, as I really enjoyed the script itself and would hope that each cast member goes home and studies said script tonight, as it had the potential to be a really enjoyable production.
“Dirty Dusting” runs until the 30th of September at Durley Memorial Hall.