The Sorting Room

‘The Sorting Room’ is a farce, written and directed by WA talent Fred Petersen. It is showing at the Garrick Theatre, 16 Meadow Street, Guildford nightly at 8.00 pm. until Saturday 30^th October. One matinee on Sunday 24^th at 2.00 pm.

 

       The curtain rises to reveal early morning in a charity shop’s, clothes sorting room.  Ima Corker (!!) (Helen Hopper) is working hard but the staff’s tardiness is agitating the middle-aged, overanxious boss, Vernon (Stephan De Jonghe) – who still lives with his mother. Teenage Michael (Rodney Palmer) who is constantly being picked upon, wanders in with Lilly (Kath Jones, excellent really got into the part) who is extremely tired, mainly through sexual frustration.

       The team are sorting out the quality goods from the rubbish, the better clothes being sold to up-market second hand shops, such as those owned by Mrs Garten (Joan Scafe – good sport). The door opens and a new employee has arrived for her first day. It is the man-eating, Blossom (Renee Hammond). Wearing a minimal skirt which looked more like a pelmet, and a low cut blouse that would allow a liberal application of sun-cream. If anything in trousers moved, Blossom was there.
 

      When the young local Pastor arrives (Rob Whitehead) to see how business was going with his fund-raising enterprise, he was followed closely by alcoholic dropout, Smelly Tom (Ray Egan – a magnificent drunk, with plenty of subtly, better than Freddie Frinton?).

 

This was a good farce with all the necessary features, opening and closing of multiple doors, confusion and a very good storyline. Unfortunately, as often happens with writer / directors the pace was lagging in places. Fred Petersen is a well proven, prize winning director and writer, but the two together just didn’t reach the full potential of this very good play.

In comedy having the characters speak out their thoughts is fatal, as it inevitably gives away punch lines, a few facial expressions and more body language is far more satisfactory. The script was written to ‘read’ rather than be ‘spoken’. After a 20% thinning of the dialogue, read it into a tape recorder and study the flow. Sounds a drastic review, but don’t be disheartened, it was a good, fun show which could have been so much better.

The direction was quite involved to ensure bodies disappeared and accidents happened, and generally these moves were slick and very successful, adding a great deal to the fun of the farce. A few good twists. The audience loved it.

Gordon the Optom