11 - Richard and Trudy, Exit Theatre Company, Charles Cryer Theatre in Carshalton

Number 11 is a play written by a friend of mine, David Trotter, which I did the lighting for last week.

I had mixed feelings about this production. Exit are very good at special effects and the best bits of the production were definitely the murders. Blood all over the stage, eyeballs being spat into the audience etc, it was all very Nighty Night or League of Gentlemen.

However for me this just didn't fit in with the play's setting, a Faulty Towers-esque hotel in Devon run by a couple who were basically Sybil and Basil Faulty. It was like an old fashioned farce but with a graphic sex scene and gory violence. It just didn't seem to make up its mind what genre it was. If John Cleese had done a Faulty Towers episode where he pulled his trousers down and shagged Connie Booth in the reception, then chopped off Andrew Sach's head with a bread knife, rather than being entertained everyone would think he'd gone raving mad.

There were a few great performances in the play, I thought Matt Lunnemann's panicked hotel owner, Richard, was great, basically a good John Cleese impression and Angel Marinez really stole the show as the lovable but stupid detective Thomas. There was a lack of chemistry between Richard and Trudy making their relationship very unbelievable, which I think was because Matt played Richard as quite naturalistic while Gill Butler was playing a much more of a caricature as Trudy. I just didn't get her performance to be honest, she didn't seem to react to what other characters were saying and it was all in exactly the same tone all the way through which I found irritating. (Hard for me to judge though as I auditioned for the part and would have done it very differently so maybe that's it.)

I thought Lucy Hamilton and Joe Webster played the two chav characters very well, and I think they got the biggest laughs after Angel. But although the performances were very good I didn't like these two characters from the time I first read the play, they are an old stereotype now reminiscent of ancient Little Britain sketches. If you're going to write this kind of character I think it should be much more realistic and have more depth to it, like the girl in Misfits, or even the McQueens in Hollyoaks. When middle class Waitrose shoppers like me take a cheap shot at working class people it makes me feel uncomfortable. Maybe I'm just too full of lefty guilt, it has certainly been said of me before.

I thought David did a very good job with the plot, I certainly wouldn't be able to come up with such a neat storyline with just the right amount of twists and turns and I think it is an under-appreciated talent. I would definitely have tweaked the play a bit so it didn't contain black-outs apart from at the interval, as a single setting play taking place over the course of one night it was totally unnecessary to have long black outs. Unnecessary scene divisions are a pet hate of mine and happen all to often in amateur productions. They really slowed the pace down in this play which was a shame as by the end of the run the play had a lot of momentum with snappy entrances and exits through the numerous doors in true farce tradition.

Finally I'd like to add a very well done to Felicity Foregone who gave her first ever drag performance before the show. After doing a similar warm-up for Anybody for Murder? I know how terrifying a warm-up improv is. She got better every night, with just the right amount of audience participation and really got everyone in the mood.

You can buy a copy of Richard and Trudy from Amazon here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Trudy-Play-David-Trotter/dp/1840948086