42 - The Mummy's Tomb, Exit Theatre at the Charles Cryer, Carshalton

I really enjoyed the big colourful characters in this production, but probably would have cut it down as it lacked the substance needed to keep our attention for such a long play.

This typical egyptian Mummy story sees an egyptologist, his daughter and her suitors on a quest to discover a lost tomb, only to uncover a cursed undead Mummy.

The best performances were those played in the required cartoonish style, so the characters which really shone were inevitably the baddies. Scott Nicholson was very funny as a posh trigger-happy Lord Soaper, but I did think a comedy walk would have completed the character. Sarah Jane was a real gem as the evil Egyptian queen and dominated the stage. James Farr played an excellent Nazi villain with a great stage presence who perhaps just needed to be a bit louder when talking in Arabic gibberish to the Egyptians.

The fights and action scenes should have been more cartoonish too to give a definite style to the whole thing, the best parts were the comic punches where there was a batman style sound effect.

Overall the acting felt like the actors had been asked to reign in the ott characters to make it more naturalistic like Indiana Jones, which didn't work. We didn't sympathise with the one dimensional characters, so we just wanted it to be funny.

This was one of the things which gave me the feeling the director, Graham Butler, did not seem to know what he was directing. The play was billed as a farce in the literature which it definitely wasn't. If anything it was a spoof, but not one which made any particularly knowing comments or jokes on the genre. The script was a melodrama, but Exit had cut out the songs so it no longer held together as one. It did occur to me that perhaps it was a family production for kids, who might have enjoyed it if it had been cut down a bit. However the promotional material did seem to be aimed at adults so I was left a bit bemused about who the target audience was, and what we were supposed to be watching.

There was some clever set construction, I particularly really liked the boat which folded up from the raised back area of the stage with the black curtains at the back pulled apart in a triange shape so the white wall behind created the appearance of sails. There was also a scne in which Lucy Hamilton as the archeologist's dim but attractive daughter was shown in silhouette in a tent being attacked by a snake which was very well executed technically and ended with a hillarious rescue with James Farr fighting a toy snake.

Overall this was fun but too serious at points and far too long, there is a reason Scooby Doo is only a ten minute cartoon and we grew rather weary by the end of the show!

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