CLASS ACT TAKES OFF WITH CABIN CREW
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Review by Laura Kinsale - ‘Club Class’ - South Park Arts Centre, Bracknell July 2005
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Some would argue that air travel is a dour affair, with its cramped seating, dodgy food and awful in-flight movies. For playwright Harry Denford, however, the business of flying is a comedy gold mine.
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Denford, a former commercial airline pilot, has mined the minutiae of life as a cabin crew member for his latest play, ‘Club Class’. The play follows four stewards and stewardesses on a charter flight to Portugal and is performed in the Brecht style, which embraces minimal staging to allow the story to leap from location to location with the actors playing multiple roles from pilots to baggage handlers.
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The ‘set’ is a simple box that represents numerous objects and places and the cast - including stand up comic Dan Thomas who excels in numerous roles within this production along with fellow cast members Simon Brencher, Catherine Adams and Melissa Jones. Denford himself play the narrator and distances himself somewhat from the action as per this style of theatre. The set is basically that big box and it’s used as seats, restaurants and a cockpit. This style of theatre does rely heavily on sound effects and lighting and atmosphere and choice music is used throughout to help with the seamless scene transfers.
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This Brecht theatre style worked well within the venue, a converted basement bar usually used for stand up comedy and live music at the South Hill Park Arts Centre. This venue will soon also see Godber’s ‘Bouncers’ performed by a separate theatre company there, and I mention ‘Bouncers’ as ‘Club Class’ follows the same format as its more famous brother, but there similarities end. ‘Club Class’ stands alone and one would think with this level of writing and energy, ‘Club Class’ will in a few years be as popular a play to perform as Godbers ‘Bouncers’. I also find this style more enjoyable for the audience, because they’re able to become more involved in the production than with “drawing room-style” theatre, which keeps viewers at arm’s length. It’s interactive but not so much so that the audience are intimidated. In fact the interaction starts as the audience take their seats and are served drinks and sweets by the trolley dollies.
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’Club Class’ is populated with over-the-top characters with real-life alter egos. The four main characters are cabin crew and with this style of theatre means they must be played in a truthful and naturalistic manner, and so by making these four so natural, everyone else they play can be cartoon-like and caricatured. The audience has to be able to say, ‘Okay, the person who was playing an Australian cabin crew member is now playing a Pakistani baggage handler’. Otherwise, it can get quite confusing for the audience. However slick direction and obvious character changes make following such a complicated theatre piece easy on the audience.
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The two cabin crew trainers, played by Jones and Adams for example, are completely grotesque and over-the-top. They just insult anybody who’s not perfect and pretty and then simply snap back into the two cabin crew the trainers are referring to.
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The play has a longer first half then second half, and the pace changes somewhat in the latter, as more drama enters the plot line. Much of the second half is back story and leaves the confines of the aircraft and like any good drama, earlier unrelated scenes start to piece together. The strongest cabin crew characters for me were Cindy who obviously shouldn’t be flying after a death of a close friend and slowly her state of mind starts to impact on the flight and MJ who we slowly see as a user and correctly underplayed to perfection by Melissa Jones. The two male cabin crew are less obvious in their personal traits and still somewhat cartoon like in overall campness. Although some of the best lines were given by the boys in full camp mode including the wonderful line when referring to a gay fellow steward ‘He couldn’t spot a plane full of Judy Garland fan club members on a flight to a Soft Cell concert’ Certain aspects didn’t fit well with the silliness of the piece such as a sexual assault on MJ by her step dad, and such came as a shock to us all. However the strength of the writing and performance meant that seconds after seeing a somewhat nasty assault scene, we were in stitches as the baggage handlers from hell provided plenty of laughs.
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The play is on a national tour before coming to London at end of July. My advice is get a ticket now, or else you will miss the flight! - July 2005
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