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I couldn’t quite believe it but I was in trouble as soon as I walked through the Tower’s front door. “Sorry, you can’t come in with those shoes” said a dinner-jacketed figure pointing at what I thought was a pair of inoffensive canvas slip ons; I muttered some excuse about having sore feet. Elsewhere in the theatre bar there were three other burly figures similarly dressed and looking equally forbidding. I thought I’d better not hang around and made my way up into the auditorium. Here four pink beribboned big haired cocktail waitresses were dishing out lurid coloured liquids into glasses while jigging along to a “Now That’s What I Call Music” compilation firmly set in c. 1980s. This was just the opening salvo of fun for Bouncers & Shakers, a double bill which examined the night life of a provincial town in both the “Shakers” bar and “Mr Cinders” disco through the eyes of some of the people who work there.
Shakers by John Godber and Jane Thornton (aka Mrs Godber) was actually written as a later companion piece to Bouncers but here was up first, following a delightful musical prologue involving all eight actors. Nicki, Adele, Carol and Mel are facing a change in their working conditions. Their boss wants to get them into – and possibly out of – hot pants and that’s the thin end of the wedge; Carol declares that they will have to go topless next. While this is the spine of the play it isn’t really what it is about. For these workers there are hopes, dreams and ambitions to be pursued such as getting into acting or gaining and retaining a boyfriend. There are also pregnancy scares and fluctuating weight issues to be negotiated – not to mention the dynamics of clothes shops’ changing rooms. Insecurities are well on display.
The play also takes a long hard look at the bar customers who come and go; the girls on a night out, the pretentious media types who drop in after work, the old men who remember the venue when it was a pub – much of human life was there. Arabella Hornby’s wannabe actress and Emily Deane’s possibly pregnant young woman were particularly well realised and together with Michaela Forssblad and Alexa Wall the quartet shape, age and gender shifted to great effect providing moments of outrageous comedy but also intimate confessional drama. Like the cocktails they were serving it was a heady mix.
After some minimal set changes to Philip Ley’s gloriously lurid yet absolutely right décor we were off to the disco as seen through the eyes of the titular Bouncers. Lucky Eric, Ralph, Judd and Les also had their own tales to tell and these examined the theme of toxic masculinity way before it became fashionable to do so. Like their female counterparts the foursome also embodied the lives of the punters who rocked up at the front door. A hen night was particularly well evoked, and I also greatly enjoyed the sequence where various partygoers arrived only to find themselves rejected and/or ejected for any one of a number of reasons.
Occasionally Lucky Eric (so called as he’s the one that invariably finds the fiver accidentally left behind by a customer) stepped outside the confines of the club and his role to monologue in greater depth directly to the audience. Chris Frawley adopted a more seriously intimate tone for these elements which also occurred in Shakers but were there more evenly distributed between all four performers. As well as Ralph, James Johnston also played the hilariously cheesy club DJ. Both Kevin Furness and Matthew Ibbotson’s facial expressions were priceless in a number of roles and especially when they were forced to dance together as the left over couple in one of the mating rituals which peppered the action.
The direction of both pieces was superbly carried out by Ruth Sullivan with a fine eye for telling detail and the introduction of some extremely well drilled movement routines. I don’t know how long it must have taken to string together the underlying soundtrack which was completely evocative of the era and which also makes wry commentary on the action at many points - “you were working as a waitress in a cocktail bar”, indeed. Samuel Littley’s lighting plot worked well with the soundtrack to conjure up a particular era while Lucy Moss had a good deal of fun with the costumes – I was glad to see the patterned tights and white socks which were such a hallmark of the times were well in evidence.
It was an intriguing idea to run these two shows back to back thereby highlighting themes and idea which ran throughout. While I would still say that Bouncers is the more robustly funny of the pair it was good to see the less often performed Shakers being given an airing and providing a counterpoint to the male dominated world of the earlier play. In a series of short scenes, the plays set out the world as it was for many forty years ago and that we might remember with a mixture of horror and affection. If you loved the 1980s then you would have absolutely appreciated the care that was been taken to conjure up this lost world. Hopefully you were one of those lucky punters, but if you weren’t all I can say is you missed out on a good old razzle dazzle night on the town.
Photography by Robert Piwko
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