Theatre: The Picture of Doreen Gray.....

Award winning LipService Theatre return to the New Wolsey.

Doreen Gray has it all, a drive time radio show, a high ratings lifestyle programme on Even More 4, but hitting 50, Doreen finds her face no longer fits the bill. At a school reunion she stumbles across a youthful self-portrait and makes a dark and dreadful deal. Featuring community actors as Doreen’s school mates live on stage and on film.


This would actually be a very funny and clever performance if I'd not seen this sort of thing so many times before. I'm guessing the guy behind me was new to theatre comedy by his constant very loud laughter, so nice to hear him enjoying himself (my friends didn't think the same). However I found it very boring when repeatedly moving door frames and peering through them, a few times is funny but this was all the way through and most of the actual stage movement jokes have been done to death, for instance when the performer who needs to quick change into the next character is asked to open the door and let them in replies with "you have to, I can't" with an exaggerated wink!

Don't want to be totally negative as there were lots of good points, the spoof script to the original Oscar Wilde play was a good idea. The number of quick costume changes to create so many characters must have been exhausting. The woman who did the sign language at the side of the stage was brilliant and had to change shoes three times and add a jacket to be part of the performance not just a bit on the side (so to speak). And they used some local actors for a crowd scene, and they did a special credit roll at the end naming each of the local actors.  Plus I like theatre going and need the variety good and bad to give me blog material 😉

Actually my friends had said the previous two performance by LipService they had been to had been really unfunny so I'm not sure why they decided to try again, but for me I'll not bother with any future tickets for them.
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