WILD GOOSE CHASE

performed at Cumbernauld Theatre, October 1988

ADA	Pat Currie	LORD ELWOOD	Bill Mitchell
PATRICIA ELWOOD	Carol Finlay	LADY ELWOOD	Rena Haldane
JENNY STEWART	Susanne McCafferty	MISS PARTRIDGE	Margaret Clark
CHESTER DREADNOUGHT	Gerry McGladrigan	CAPONE	Charles McKinnon
HILARY POND	Brian Gillespie	WEDGWOOD	Andrew McNeilly

The Apex players entered into their 25th year this week with a polished performance of the fast-moving farce "Wild Goose Chase".

The play, written by Derek Benfield, is an old favourite and was first performed by the Apex Players 22 years ago! This new version, was directed by Robert Morson, who appeared in the original version as "Wedgwood" - incidentally a non-speaking part.

The plot revolves around the attempts of photographer Chester Dreadnought to evade two shady characters, Capone and Wedgwood, who are chasing him to retrieve a photograph which shows them holding up a bank.

Chester, played by Gerry McGladrigan, arrives at the castle owned by Lord and Lady Elrood, and pretends to be Robert Newton-Strangeways, their expected guest. But Chester might have been safer with Capone and Wedgwood (Charles McKinnon and Andrew McNeilly), because the castle is inhabited by a host of crazy characters, such as Lord Elrood (Bill Mitchell), who believes he has a private army and takes pot-shots at the postman; the tipsy Lady Elrood (Rena Haldane); a short-sighted maid called Ada (Pat Currie); and young Jenny (Susanne McCafferty), who has a crush on traffic policeman Hilary Pond, played by Brian Gillespie.

Another visitor to the house is Miss Partridge (Margaret Clark), who is searching for relics of Cromwell. In fact, the only relatively sane member of the household is Pat (Carol Finlay), the daughter of Lord and Lady Elrood, with whom Chester immediately falls in love.

Chester's romantic intentions are interrupted by the arrival of Capone and Wedgwood, and it is only after much confusion and the intervention of the timid PC Pond that the situation is resolved and the two cartoon gangsters brought to justice.

The Apex Players could perhaps have celebrated their silver jubilee by performing something with a little more substance, but "Wild Goose Chase", being a silver celebration occasion, amply provided plenty of laughs and proved a great hit with the audience - themselves in happy and celebratory mood.

All the elements of classic farce were injected into the proceedings, and Gerry McGladrigan's flustered Chester Dreadnought was at the heart of it all. It takes a brave man to take on the part of a character who has to be chased across the stage for two hours, lose his trousers, dress in a suit of armour, and finally, get into drag as "Mrs Gribble", but Gerry McGladrigan bore up well, giving an assured and amusing performance.

Charles McKinnon, who also played Capone in the first production of "Wild Goose Chase", turned in a convincingly wicked performance as the Germanic gangster, with excellent support from Andrew McNeilly as his sidekick Wedgwood. Without a word of dialogue, McNeilly created a memorable comic character.

In a production packed with good performances - Pat Currie's strident "Ada", Margaret Clark's eccentric "Miss Partridge", Brian Gillespie's timid and stuffy "Hilary Pond", and Rena Haldane's splendidly dotty "Lady Elrood" - in my opinion, the two stand-out players were Bill Mitchell as "Lord Elrood" and Susanne McCafferty as "Jenny". Lord Elrood's appearances were brief - running across the stage, gun in hand, after the postman - but memorable, making one wish he could be on stage more often than he was. Susanne McCafferty was excellent as the policeman-infatuated Jenny, and was responsible for many of the play's best moments. She had a fine sense of comic timing, and played well with the other actors.

A pleasant surprise came at the end of the play, when the postman, seen for the first time, takes his revenge on Lord Elrood. The triumphant postie was played by Bert Haldane, one of the founder members of the Apex Players 25 years ago!

Congratulations must also go to the backstage crew, whose work with the sets, costumes, props and lighting were just as important a contribution to the play's success.

There is only one minor criticism to be made not of the Apex Players, but of the Cumbernauld Theatre itself. The Theatre's waterworks seem to be a little temperamental, as the pipes at the back of the theatre kept up their accompaniment throughout the performance. In fact, some theatre-goers believed that the gurgling of the pipes was supposed to be a part of the atmosphere of Elrood Castle!