The pandemic has put a dampener on live music and theatre over the last few years, with the industry only now beginning to recover and live entertainment making its way onto our stages once again.
Thankfully, we’ve managed to get some of this entertainment out here in the countryside too. And thus this December we were treated to the Twin Town Players performance of ‘Murder at Aunt Agatha’s’.
Murder at Aunt Agatha’s is one of those classic who-dunnit plays, where all the characters are gathered in one house for the reading of a will. And in classic style, those characters keep getting murdered, both keeping the audience entertained and leading them to speculate on which character the murderer could be!
This production of Aunt Agatha starred many locals from the Rylstone and Kandos area, and was directed by the talented Ms. Cathy Heap. Spanning 4 days, the Rylstone Hall was packed with people eager to watch some live theatre once again. So lets work our way through the characters and the talented actors that brought them to life upon the stage.
The Earl Family
A comedic ‘nerd’ family, made up of a Mother (played by Rachelle Connellan), Father (Roger Heap – its rumoured that he got the role by sleeping with the director!), Daughter (Phillipa Kilminister) & Son (Ryan Gallaher). These characters are some of the few that have any brains in the play, though not a lot of common sense. The younger actors wore headsets in order to be heard by the audience and the family unit received lots of chuckles, before being unceremoniously killed en masse by poisoned ink.
The Vamvleet Family
Posh with a side of dark sheep. Mrs. Margaret Vanvleet (played by Leanne Bessant) and her daughter Alexandra (Kyrstal Thorn) are high society types that look down upon those around them, including their own relations. Leanne played a fantastic Margaret, a character prone to dramatically fainting, whilst Krystal shone as the petulant, spoiled Alexandra, always threatening to leave if it wasn’t for the money. Margaret’s other son, Reggie Vamvleet (Isabelle Furner/Big Angry Trev) is the black sheep of the family, fresh out of jail he turns up hoping for some inheritance money, spending his time either insulting everybody or sleazily flirting with some of the female characters. Isabelle played Reggie in a very ‘Fonzie’ style whereas the other actor, well… we will come to that later. Margaret meets her end via poisoned moonshine, Alexandra meets her end via a cliff and oddly Reggie is one of the few characters to survive.
The McSwine Family
Relatives of the snooty Vamvleets, these are the quintessential hillbillies which makes for a funny juxtaposition between the two family branches, played out over several scenes. The mother Mrs. Katie Mae McSwine (played by Owain James) and her three daughters (Emily Gallaher, Jess Gallaher & Janine Maw) are all extremely funny on stage and tick all the stereotype hillbilly boxes such as loving Elvis, drinking moonshine, winning spitting contests and, most disturbingly, having a crush on their cousin. And with the experienced thespian Owain dressed as the matriarch, that old tradition of men dressing up as women on stage was kept alive. The three daughters, all of whom were involved with the KHS production of Pricilla earlier in the year, came across very relaxed on stage and maintained character extremely well – it will be interesting to see their progression as actors in future theatricals.
The Movie Star & her Agent
Sounds like something out of Gilligan’s Island, but no. Gina Starlet (Mary Boxsell) and her long-suffering agent Maxie (Anne Attwood) have shown up looking for a share in the inheritance. Mary plays the faded-starlet character beautifully, and she and Anne share the most dramatic death scene in the entire play. The two of them choking to death earned a huge roar of approval and round of applause on the third night of the play, their dramatics delighting the appreciative crowd!
The Evil Siblings
Bridgett (played by Kirilee Besant) and Hildegard (Ryan Attwood) were in the service of Aunt Agatha and are now hoping to scare off all the relatives so that they can get the cash for themselves. These are some of the more in-depth characters portrayed in the show – they are siblings but are pretending to be twin sisters rather than brother & sister, despite the fact that Bridgett talks with a French accent and her ‘sister’ talks with a German one. Part of the humour is that Hildegard really does look like a man in a dress, and for most of the play he seems the most obvious suspect to be the murderer. Ryan did a very funny and over-the-top rendition of Hildegard, and boy can that boy scream! Kirilee was fantastic as Bridgett, and would often improvise stage movements, like roughly shoving away the lecherous Reggie at random times, or fixing the blankets on the couch playing to the French Maid theme of her character.
The Lawyer, Aunt Agatha, Police & Prompter
Taking on multiple roles can be tough, but Chantelle Williams did it seamlessly. Chantelle provided the voice for Aunt Agatha’s recordings, as well as coming on in the last scene to arrest the murderer. Perhaps even more importantly, she was the prompter on side of stage, providing much needed help whenever anyone would forget a line. Full credit should also be given to Willow Connellan who was a dynamo backstage as well!
Willima Cleanyou, played by Belinda Innes, is Aunt Agatha’s laywer and is a very strong and stern character, showing the most authority in the play before the Detective enters. Belinda’s performance of this embezzling lawyer was flawless, never missing a beat!
The Leading Man & Lady
Two of the stand-out performances of the show were by Emily Gardiner, playing Rose Bloom, and actor of stage & screen Blake Prosser, playing Detective Sam Club. Rose is an overtly sweet character who is not all she appears, hiding the deviousness within, and managing to initially charm Sam. Sam himself is a hard-talking, no-nonsense gumshoe who turns up just before the end of Act 1, and his striving to find the killer is one of the main plot motivators for the second half of the show. Rose likes everyone whereas Sam suspects everyone, so naturally these two disparate characters develop an attraction for each other, even if it is short lived. Like Bridgett & Hildegard, these are two characters that are more fleshed out than most of the others, giving the actors a chance to display a range of emotions rather than simply playing a one-dimensional role, and both Emily and Blake were up to the task, delighting audiences with their performances night after night.
The Ghosts
5 local children – Allison George, Ellaria Jonkers, Ashton Thorn, India Jonkers & Ryder Robinson – played the Ghosts of Aunt Agatha, interjecting some welcome cuteness into a play that is otherwise all about murder and self-interested characters. The ghosts come on stage twice during the production, and the audience loved it every time!
And, er, the other guy…
Yes dear readers, Big Angry Trev did strut the stage again, and strut is probably the best way to describe it – what I lacked in script-knowledge I made up in swagger.
Unfortunately the actor playing Reggie was sick for 3 of the 4 shows so I had to step in at the last minute and play the role. And it was very last minute – I didn’t meet the cast until an hour before showtime, didn’t get a chance for a single run through and said the lines out loud for the first time during the opening show! Despite having script in hand I still forgot a lot of lines and a lot of cues, so thankfully the rest of the cast were good at subtly prompting me or prodding me in the right direction.
Reggie is a sod of a character, which made him a lot of fun to play! That said, all the horrible insulting things I had to say to Krystal, Emily, Jess & Janine, as well as the sleazy pick-up lines I had to use on Kirilee & Emily, made me cringe a little inside at times. But I found that there was a certain liberation with having been to no rehearsals – no one could get mad at me for missing cues and lines because I was stepping in last second, and I could pretty make up what the character Reggie was like as I went along – by the 3rd show I was swaggering around the stage, walking almost crotch-first, busting out insults and pervy comments right, left & centre. All in for some reason a slightly cockney accent. It was great fun! Full cred to the girls for getting their revenge though, Kirilee’s character was shoving mine a lot more than the script called for. And the cousins Emily, Jess & Janine enjoyed tormenting me/my character with overly-theatrical sniffing and plucking of head hairs – it was all I could do to not to burst out laughing on stage!
Community Theatre at it’s best!
Part of the joy of community theatre is that it really is made up of members of the local community. This means instead of a bunch of egotistic actors all coming together in order to practice their art and further their careers, it’s regular folk from the local towns who have decided to put on a fun show. Murder at Aunt Agatha’s cast and crew were made up of husbands & wives, mothers & offspring and even 3 siblings from the one family! It also put everyone on a level playing field, there were 6 students and 3 staff from the local High School and it was pleasant to see how these teens and adults interacted with each other as peers, any pre-existing power dynamics from school now non-existent.
This all made for a warm and convivial atmosphere and this came out backstage, on stage and with the casts interactions with the audience, which every night consisted of a sea of smiles.
Full credit to the cast and crew for putting on a fantastic show! I heartily look forward to watching the next production by the Twin Town Players. And who knows, maybe they’ll need another sleazy cockney guy to show up at the last second again to join in with the fun!
