• Pearl, a fish packer
  Jan, a fish packer
  Shelley, a fish packer
  Linda, a fish packer
  Joe, the supervisor
  Fred, a ticket tout
  Jim McCormack, TV pundit
  Patrick, a jockey
  Kevin, a gambler
  Barry, a bookie

• Director
• Assistant Director
• Stage Management Team
• S
• Lighting Design
• Sound Design
• Lighting & Sound
• Continuity
• Set Design
• wardrobe
• S
• programme/Poster design

• Angie wright
  Angie james
  Cherry newby
  Clare forshaw
  Lee coleman-Powney
  Peter barnes
  Lee coleman-powney
  Don faulkner
  Peter barnes
  Roger trace

• Dennis Picott
• Wendy Picott
• Ray & Debbie Cox & Milli Palmer-Wright
• Gary English
• Alan Lade
• Phil Armstrong
• Wendy Picott
• Alan Lade
• Helena Bell, Wendy picott & the cast
• Alan lade

FRINGE REVIEW by Dr Simon Jenner

Dennis Picott brings Amanda Whittington’s 2005 Ladies' Day to Seaford Little Theatre, with a neat folding design by Alan Lade, lit by Gary English and Phil Armstrong who also supervise effective racetrack sound. The wardrobe (Helena Bell, Wendy Picott) is resourceful, both in the fish packing plant (notably pink matching wellies) and contrasting hatwear on the Royal Ascot periphery.

We know Whittington for her 2013 The Thrill of Love, about Ruth Ellis, which enjoys popularity everywhere. But Ladies’ Day has done so since 2005, altogether a gentler feelgood play. To say Dinner Ladies meets Gut Girls meets Dead Cert might suggest a certain giddiness, but it’s as well crafted as these and giddiness is earned, often in champagne.

Four women: Pearl fifty-five; Jan single mother with her daughter at university; Shelley a reality TV wannabe and Linda at twenty-four cowed by an alcoholic mother, discuss Pearl’s quitting the Hull fish packing factory. We’re introduced to them nattily garbed for grim territory, with unceasing gutting and packing topping those blue-grey uniforms and pink wellies.

Cornered into send-off Pearl chooses Royal Ascot at York. Benign supervisor Joe (it’s hard not to think Dinner Ladies, though Lee Coleman-Powney’s wistfully different) pushes them to seize this sunny day, revealing he’s off to Australia himself. That down-under gesture is how the play’s dynamic  upends everything so Ladies of Misrule for a day becomes with the plot perhaps forever and-a-day. Whittington compresses an incessant diurnal round into a sudden flip-over to creative chaos.

Having made the course fantastically hats-tricked,  the women find a tout charging £2,000 (the first of Peter Barnes’ cameos) and an expensive handbag… with four tickets. They might do the decent thing eventually but not with the tickets. And they’re in, where they’ve bet extravagantly on an accumulator: six horses, bearing Tony Christie hits. We’re treated to these…

Whittington’s clever use of TV Pundit Jim McCormack - Lee Coleman-Powney’s other role – doubly functions as turf expounder and a sharp eye for Shelley, who snappily  reciprocates. Even if she does call herself Sahara. Coleman-Powney revels in contrasting Joe with the raffish indeed rapacious McCormack. Cherry Newby’s Shelley is a match, fantasizing her way through a Flickr of celebs she’s met.

Between hoof-bursts is a different thunder: Shelley’s wish-list, Pearl’s apparently perfect marriage underpinned by a long-term affair with a bookie (hence her choice) and Jan’s already-hinted passion for Oz-bound Jo. One of two highlights comes when Pearl’s Angie Wright confides to Angie James’ increasingly inebriated Jan – a cringingly believable slump of a performance from James. Their interaction pitches to a touching, truthful portrayal.

Clare Forshaw’s Linda shrink-fits into fear and loneliness; her destructive, thieving mother her one occasional companion. Forshaw shades a low decibel ego perfectly: just above a whisper. She encounters Patrick a jockey as he mutters into a mobile, as solitary and undernourished as Linda; save that he’s got to keep his weight down.

Don Faulkner’s Patrick not only looks the diminutive part, his physicality’s palpable, as is his mercurial way with Forshaw’s back-off Linda, where gently cajoling and reminiscing he draws her out. His recitative of just one great win is exciting, funny, trimmed with pathos more than streamers. There’s pain too, recalling smashed bones and the death of a horse. By colliding vulnerable people who bond over banned sugar lumps, Whittington amplifies the track at a perfect pitch in the narrative.

Patrick’s riding Broken Dreams, last horse on the accumulator. A gambler (Barnes again) lurches across the plot eliciting unexpected redemption from hard-sell Shelley: you appreciate Whittington’s reveals, not just plot but character-driven. Meanwhile Pearl’s bookie Barry (kindly Roger Trace) turns up. There’s a waltz and piece of paper to prove it wasn’t quite a dream. As the final hurdle approaches, twists and falls spring up till we’re back at the factory for an unexpected denouement.

This production boasts outstanding moments, and high production values: the factory doors and walls fold out to an attractive sky-and-track with unfussy, excellent props. FOH in full top and tails underscores the quality.

Wright and James particularly together are a delight, and Faulkner’s pitch-perfect Donegal Patrick not only brings the whiff of paddock and angst but allows Forshaw to glint, contrasting her well-founded characterisation. There’s good work too from Coleman-Powney bouncing off the fame-ravening Newby, with Barnes and Trace firming the diversity of experience this nattily-packed play brings. Picott paces a mostly sterling production from a small house I hadn’t experienced, with moments of brilliance. There’s a sequel to Ladies’ Day, though its title might spoil the plot. See this; find out for yourselves.

SEAFORD SCENE Review by Andrea Hargreaves

If I was offering odds on the success of this play they would be something in the order of 10 to 1 because Ladies' Day had a stable load of form, from fish, flutters and fancies to glamorous hats, a ghost and a daring accumulator bet.

Like a well-judged race, the first act action was held back by playwright Amanda Whittington to allow the field to gallop to a great finish. But while the first half was slow, director Dennis Picott got us champing at the bit as the opening scene in a northern fish packing shop gave way to an Ascot of the north at York.

There was something of the set piece in Picott's staging, with the fish girls all in pink wellies as they gossiped and sang Is This the Way to Amarillo? a shoe-in for Cherry Newby who has often been seen on the stage of Seaford Musical Theatre and was making her Seaford Little Theatre debut. She played, with gusto, fish packer Shelley; desperate to make a big win, pay off her debts and spend, spend, spend, and used her body to hilarious effect.

The piece hinged around Pearl, amusingly played by Angie Wright, who has taken part in four p!ays at this theatre. She decided to celebrate her imminent retiremerit by takingthe girls to the races, and while there told Angie James' Jan of an affair she had had which only ended when he failed to tum up one day. Jan, who is in love with supervisor Joe, gets amazingly drunk and in so doing showed what a great actress she is.

Clare Forshaw played Linda as the delightfully naive ingenue of the fish packers, who beguiles Den Faulkner's jockey, also making his first appearance at the Little Theatre but who, I would wager, we ought to be seeing a lot more of. As he recalled the first race he won he mimed its progress, and we were all there, hanging on those rails, urging him on.

Lee Coleman­Powney played the fish packer supervisor and then TV pundit Jim, who tried to buy the services of star-struck Shelley, managing the switch in characters very persuasively. Peter Barnes also had two parts, a ticket tout and a gamb!er demonstrating tic-tac gestures as if born to it.

Another newcomer, Roger Trace, played the part of Pearl's lover Barry with sensitivity, for, dear reader, death had prevented him meeting her, but he did reappear as a ghost bearing the all-important winning betting slip. For of course, this being comedy, the girls had ripped up their slips when the horse in the last race accumulator came second on a photo finish - only for the winner to be disqualified.

This silly story was saved by inspired acting and direction which included some nifty scene shifting of the simple but effective set by stagehands got up as race-going toff's. Yes, we backed a winner.