Hastings Battleaxe enjoys a night at the Stables Theatre

Last night we went to see ‘See How they Run’ at the Stables Theatre.  We haven’t been for ages….. The play was directed by a friend of ours , and we both had an excellent laugh out loud experience.

When we first came to Hastings we joined the Stables as members and went pretty often, but somehow our habits have changed and we haven’t been for ages. However, our friend Jenny Wiles was directing ‘See How they Run’ so off we went. Jenny and Peter Wiles are newcomers to Hastings – we know them via our old friend Karol in Lyme Regis.

Given that Jenny is a newcomer, it seemed a massive job to embark on directing a play with a theatre set-up and a load of people you don’t know very well – and we know only too well that some sectors of Hastings society are not too good with incomers….  However, she has had a life doing theatrical things – both as an actor and as a director, so we assumed she must know her business.  In my last post I briefly mentioned how scary these things can be – I infinitely prefer reading my own poems to an audience than I would care to direct a play – the performance, the result of your hard work, is totally out of your control.

The play is a good old-fashioned farce, written in the 1940s. There are loads of people dressed as vicars rushing about, everyone pretending to be everyone else, people in their underwear falling on top of tipsy village spinsters, outraged bishops, cheeky maids, people locked in cupboards and so on. It went very well and had plenty of laughs. The job of organising and co-ordinating all that frenzied action made us even more impressed with the job Jenny had done!

The actors all did a good job, particularly Claire Bolt who played the heroine.  They also had a good full house.

Battleaxe and Philosopher are old enough to remember the Whitehall farces with Brian Rix, on the telly in the 60s. I remember watching, and laughing fir to burst, with my parents. It’s a very innocent sort of entertainment.  It may seem old-fashioned but it is not dead – a few years ago we went to ‘Noises Off’ at the Old Vic… an even more frantic farce by Michael Frayn.

Anyway, we’ll try and get back into going to the Stables… they have done the place up since we were last there – the Ladies loo is positively sumptuous…