Boxford Drama Group presents Chase Me Up Farndale Avenu, S’il Vous Plait at the Boxford Village Hall on 30th, 31st March and 1st April. Some residents claimed that disturbances in Whitmore Reans came after a police car had been driven ''too close' to pedestrians, causing anger. The Little Swan pub in Horseley Fields was another flashpoint in Wolverhampton Police line up behind riot shields as they run the gauntlet of petrol bombs, bottles and stones in Farndale Avenue, Whitmore Reans This was a very challenging play with a small cast but these formidable ladies did it like no one else!

The director, of this production, has faithfully followed the script and its instructions…and it has paid off. The pace was excellent and interactions were well co-ordinated…there was a chair arranging sequence that seemed to take up a whole act. It was impossible to spot any fumbling that hadn’t been This is done to preserve the anonymity of the people in that area, as some postcodes cover a very small area, sometimes a single building. For Scotland, 2011 data is shown (update coming soon, the Scottish census was delayed by a year unlike the rest of the UK).Farndale’s saviour is its cast, all of whom turn in good comic performances – they get being relentlessly shit just about right. The play-within-a-play concept, though lazy, is done well, and convincingly. Olivia Dowd was impressive as hopelessly earnest director Mrs Reece – her exasperation, nicey-nicey diplomacy and provincial skittishness made it easy to forget that she wasn’t actually responsible for the mess unfolding on stage. ambition. Picture: Colin Hill Chase me Up Farndale Avenue, S’il Vous Plait The Nonentities The Rose Theatre, Kidderminster The violence continued the next day, as terrified Saturday afternoon shoppers witnessed stand-offs between police and looters in both Wolverhampton and Birmingham city centre. Police preparing for trouble in Wolverhampton Officers guarding the entrance to Dunstall Road police station in Wolverhampton Staging the play in the restricted area of the Studio could have caused a few headaches. But, in fact, the set design was a triumph; and the intimacy of the whole space added greatly to the atmosphere. There were four exits (SL archway, SR passage, SR stairway and a window), plus a false door and a fireplace

West Midlands Labour Party accused the police of 'provocative action', particularly with regards to the deployment of the Special Patrol Group, which was used to chase away looters in Wolverhampton. But West Midlands Chief Constable Sir Philip Knight defended his actions, saying that the toll of the looting and rioting would have been much worse had it not been for the strong relationship between the police and community. Once again, the Boxford Drama Group Ladies turned to the Farndale Avenue series of plays for their Spring production having previously produced two of the side-splitting Farndales, ‘The Haunted Through Lounge’ and ‘Recessed Dining Nook at Farndale Castle’with ‘Chase Me Up Farndale Avenue, S’il Vous Plait,’ which sees the hapless ladies of the Farndale WI attempt a French farce.

It is 40 years since the infamous summer of rioting tore through the West Midlands. While Handsworth suffered the worst, Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury were also hit by copycat outbreaks. Although the disturbances fizzled out after a few days, they left scars behind which are still to fully heal. As always with the Drama Group, the performers couldn’t be faulted for their enthusiasm and energy, with all the usual plot twists and a small cast of five playing what seems like hundreds of roles, confusion ensued. The tone was set from the start, as the lights failed to go down, the music came in at the wrong time and the set was revealed with doors in the wrong places, and the opening scene being interrupted almost immediately!

I’m going to lay my cards on the table at this point. Farndale, as a play, is cheap and nasty. There were times when the laziness of its humour and its depressingly predictable trajectory made Miranda Hart look like Woody Allen. Despite this, and to the immense credit of the cast, last night’s production was, on the whole, decent enough fun for things not to devolve into the sub-Pontins ordeal that the play is such fertile ground for. Review for THE NOMADS, Nomad Theatre, East Horsley June 2019 The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery Perhaps it’s because of the naff sounding titles, that the Farndale series of plays are sometimes confused with light, frothy comedies that are easy to stage and to perform…and to enjoy. But Farndale plays are complex, very carefully crafted and come with explicit instructions. You deviate from these at your peril. Long before The Play That Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong in which an amateur dramatic society experiences the horrors of what can go wrong right in front of a live audience, the fictional Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society have been resolutely presenting plays in which the scenery collapses, cues are missed, lines are forgotten and sound effects create illusions the director never imagined.

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How much of the violence was down to outside agitators will probably never be known. But there was no shortage of locals who took part in the disturbances either. In the days that followed, a 23-year-old man from Dudley was jailed for a month for chanting "Let's have a riot", while a 17-year-old from Rubery, near Bromsgrove, was sentenced to three months' detention for overturning bins, jostling passers-by and shouting. That’s the joke. No nuance or subtlety here. No social consciousness, just women from an estate doing Macbeth really badly. It’s not an especially thoughtful or imaginative premise, and it shows. Jokes wear thin, and a considerable number of dead horses are taking a flogging after about 10 minutes. The census collection is designed so that each group of postcodes should contain at least 100 people (50 in Scotland).