DAD’S ARMY
ONE of television’s most popular and best loved comedy series, now transformed into a stage production in three episodes, sees Weymouth Drama Club finding the courage and the men to perform in it.
All the favourite characters we know and love take to the stage complete with their catch-phrases as Home Guard members hilariously fumble their way through the war as part time soldiers.
Inevitably, the audience are going to compare the actors in this production with the famous television stars they are emulating and it is to their credit that they have brought off such a remarkable – and successful –coup.
Step forward Andy Neve who as Captain Mainwaring wonderfully captures the pomposity of the man in charge while Rob Tripp is in equally fine form as the upper-class Sergeant Wilson for whom the whole Home Guard business is a mild joke.
Don’t panic, here comes Ralph Wheeler, brilliant as the barmy butcher Jones and “stupid boy” Richard Hook complete with woolly scarf as mother’s boy Pike with Richard Lawson as the loo-seeking veteran Godfrey, the seriously Scottish Glen Ingram as Fraser and Paul Gorsuch as wheeler dealer Walker, all of them nicely observed and played with sympathy and skill.
A whole bunch of women, led by Julie Knight as the temptress Mrs Fox, add to the fun and the finale sees our heroes dressed as Morris Dancers and singing the Cornish Floral Dance with the aristocratic Sergeant Wilson on a pantomime horse.
The production, under the direction of Derek Sawtell, includes complex scene changes as the episodes move from church hall to café and back again while memory jogging moments are created by the live piano accompaniments of Robert Smith who plays appropriate music from the wartime era.
And if the pace is at times somewhat ponderous, the production is a tribute not just to the actors but to the backstage helpers for creating an authentic flavour of the age ranging from the army uniforms to the 1940s fashions of the women in a comedy that portrays an iconic treasure that will never be forgotten.
MARION COX
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