Review: 'Stags and Hens'

By David Brennen

Before reading our written review of the production listen to our preview on the ((URY PLAYER)) now!

This Week’s Dramsoc production saw the drama barn transformed into the grimy dingy toilets of a Liverpudlian dance hall for Willy Russell’s 'Stags and Hens' produced by Laura Stratford and Directed by Georgia Harris & Assistant Director Rory McGregor. It follows the respective Stag and Hen party of Dave (Dan Wood) and Linda (Kat Ronson) the night before they a due to be married, which inadvertently are being held in the same Liverpool club. With it bad luck to see the bride to be before the big day the girls desperately try to keep the groups apart whilst an old flame of Linda’s (Peter played by Jon Edwards) is back offering a chance to leave this dead end town, leaving Linda with a difficult choice to make.

Willy Russell is acclaimed for capturing the working class life of the 1980’s with productions such as Blood Brothers and Educating Rita, Stags and Hens being no different holding a comedic mirror up to the Liverpudlian working class that allows you to empathise and engage with the characters. The script is witty and intelligent making it exceedingly humours which the audience responded to without hesitation with so many sarcastic one liners it was hard not to have a permanent grin on your face. This humour was also its biggest weakness as it seemed to mask the sincerity and difficulties that the characters were facing.

The staging was impressive with gladly only the smell of stale urine missing to convince you were in a rundown club toilets, however 80’s it was is questionable but undoubtedly not needed. The split staging of the play for each rest room, men’s and women’s, meant that for large proportions of the production the characters were left in prolonged still images. This was handled expertly by the whole cast with such a humours play it was brilliant to seen no corpsing during these moments and a quick snap back into character necessary to pull off such a technique.

The whole cast worked wonderfully with this comedic script handling the liverpudlian accents with varying degrees of competency, although as the characters themselves were generally exaggerated it made little difference to the overall performance. The gaggle of girls seem to gel exceedingly well as a friendship group with great timing and interaction producing a very believable performance. Special mention of Maria Terry playing Carol and Alex Baldry playing Bernadette must be made who together seemed hilariously ridiculous but at the same time 100% believable who wouldn’t have been out of place in the Pink Ladies from “Grease Lightening”.

The guys showed a more contrasting hierarchal dynamic lead by Eddy played by Lewis Chandler who provided a much needed serious tone to the production at times being so genuinely terrifying producing audible gasp from the audience. This was counteracted by Ryan Hall’s performance of Robbie whose cheeky chap and blind leading the blind nature provided much needed comedy to the boy’s group dynamic, this was portrayed perfectly through a highly energetic and continually reactive performance.

All in all this play is a terrific laugh and student friendly, with familiar scenes from nights out clearly identifiable as well as the difficult prospect of the future every student has to face. With a few line stubbles and some lines being lost to laughter effecting the pace of the production it didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment of a welcomed comedy in these exam filled times.

And make sure you catch our full audio review in YorWorld, now on the ((URY PLAYER))