Shakers

I saw this show at Princess May Theatre last evening. For a change, Harbour has gone for a short, small cast piece. This can work well when the cast are all of about the same level of competence and get on with each other 'ensemble'. This appears to be so in this case. The setting is a cocktail bar called 'Shakers' in a city somewhere in the North of England (Birmingham?). There is no plot as such. The play consists of a series of 24 'vignettes', some with the main characters (4 cocktail barmaids) as themselves, others with them taking on other layers of characters in a sort of parody of the customers they serve. All very well done and engaging. As for the stories and their messages, I somehow feel we have heard it all before - Katherine Thompson's 'Barmaids' comes readily to mind - and that was actually written and premiered here in Fremantle in about 1990. While I appreciate that we should continue to learn from the theatrical achievements of other countries and cultures, I also feel that there should be more 'positive discrimination" in favour of the local product when it comes to utilisation of our scant community theatre resources. But then I am biased. Set design, sound, light and FOH were all up to Harbour's usual high standard.