Christmas 2002: Something's Afoot

Something's Afoot

Saturday 07 December 2002 at 2:30pm and 7:30pm

The Public Hall, Budleigh Salterton, Devon

"Something’s Afoot! - And the butler didn’t do it?"

The autumn leaves are falling and once again thoughts turn to our annual winter visit to Budleigh Salterton. Budleigh Salterton is a very lovely seaside town in Devon where our sister group from Imperial College go every summer to perform one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s works for a fortnight. Imperial Opera compress the entire music/theatre/party thing into just one short weekend. The venue is a classic town hall but the audience is generally very abundant and appreciative so it is a very enjoyable experience, especially for us fringe theatre veterans.

Synopsis

It is late spring, 1935: Lord Dudley Rancour’s isolated country estate, located on an island in the middle of a lake in the north country. Six ill-assorted guests assemble for a country house party: the dissolute Nephew, the family Doctor, the bluff Anglo-Indian Colonel, the Ingenue, the lady Sleuth, the society Matron. Together with a mysterious stranger, a lovable cast of inexplicably cockney servants – the result is murder!!

Musically speaking it’s a 20’s/30’s musical comedy pastiche. Lots of numbers which sound just like ones you’ve heard Fred and Ginger do. Plenty of jolly tunes and outrageous South American rhythms with a side order of cheese.

An hilarious musical comedy tribute to the golden age of British crime fiction.

Performances

Saturday 7th December 2002 at 2:30pm and 7:30pm.

So this is quite a busy day (what with the dress rehearsal at 10am!). In order to really enjoy it all it’s well worth taking Friday 6th off in order to travel and chill – but you could travel down after work/studies/whatever if you really must.

Accommodation

We rent the "Venture Hall" which is a local community centre and share the costs between anyone who wants to stay in it (usually less than a fiver a night each). It offers breakfast, a kitchen, showers, much Girl-Guide and Brownie artwork/iconography, a room of inexpensively carpeted splendour in which to erect your air-mattress, a stupendous party every night and an opportunity to listen to world class snorers performing for a very moderate fee.

Or you could decide to be a grown-up and stay in one of the many delightful bed and breakfast places in the town.

We’ll help you out with either.

Social Highlights

Late night shopping in Budleigh Salterton on Friday night. Surreal visions of line-dancing pensioners, British sherry dispensing bank managers dressed as Dickens extras, the Friday night meat raffle in The Feathers (few things in life can compete with the sheer horror of awakening at 9am the following Saturday with an exquisitely vile hangover, a dress rehearsal to go to AND a handbag full of rapidly decomposing body parts).

Secret Santa: As if there wasn’t enough to do already – a delightfully silly game which we play while we’re down there where you have a "victim" to whom you send clues and who tries to guess your identity.

Carol singing 1: If the Tourist Information office has their wicked way with us again we’ll do a session at the Friday night late night gala – bring along those green Carols for Choirs books or just sing the tune and smile nicely.

Carol singing 2: In the pub after the show on Saturday night – some Devonians make a special trip to hear our unique 37 part harmony version of Hark the Herald Angels Sing – others prefer not to. We don’t care much and there is usually a bar extension.

Dinner: After pub – (cheap but lavish) dinner at Public Hall and exposition of culprits in Secret Santa game. Jollification (optional).

Sunday: Feel mildly ill, get up, go to London. Unless you don’t live there.