In a spirit of better late than never, we are posting this anyway even though half of it is now past its sell-by date. But they’ll be an autumn production from the Minster Playhouse. And Love, Life and Laughter will return. Come next time! 🙂
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As in life, so in Downton Abbey. Sunday evenings are bright again with the return of the addictive period drama, but now it is 1925 and the arguments wrangle over who should best administer the local hospital and which members of staff will face redundancy.
“Does anyone have an under-butler these days?” muses Hugh Bonneville as the Earl of Grantham. I’ve no idea but I wouldn’t mind. Should I ever take possession of the Euromillions, I would happily eschew yachts and diamonds for the luxury of a dark-suited Jim Carter look-alike gliding towards me in tails with sage words and a small sherry. Harbouring as I do, a quiet adoration for the inscrutable Carson, only matched by my adulation of Maggie Smith playing the dowager. (I am still grieved I missed the chance to fling roses at her feet when she was filming in Broadstairs last winter.) “I wouldn’t let standards slip that far,” she announces at any suggestion of letting her own salver-bearer go. Those were the days…
If you too, like harking back in time, may I urge you to trot along to Minster Village Hall tonight or tomorrow to watch A Bolt From The Blue, the weird and wonderful tale of a man whose body clock reverses. I am so confident it will be terrific that I am writing this (such are the vagaries of local paper deadlines) before I’ve even been to see it myself. I don’t mention the thriving village of Minster-in-Thanet often enough, so here is a big shout-out for the Minster Playhouse, whose production it is, and for which my esteemed and excellent dentist, David Downes-Powell, is a whiz with the lighting and known for his special effects. David Tristram’s play promises to deliver more of the same – I have already heard rumours of lightning strikes and bodily explosions – and I fully expect the performance in general to be up to its usual high standard. It’s use it or lose it, when it comes to quality local drama. Go get your bum on a seat.
Or why not do it twice. Sunday night sees the return of the fund-raiser Love, Life And Laughter at the Sarah Thorne Memorial Theatre in Broadstairs. I am down as MC, together with the ever-fabulous Lisa Payne, to introduce an ultra-talented cast in an evening of songs, poems and sketches, and as they say, so much more. If past years are anything to go by, you’ll be in for a treat. With the warm glow of knowing you’re boosting a really good cause. All proceeds from the event go to Macmillan Cancer Support and you don’t get much more worthy than that. It starts early, at 6pm. You’ll be home for Downton Abbey…
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Read the original at: http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Plain-Jane-trip-memory-lane/story-27861756-detail/story.html
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Jane Wenham-Jones 
SMALL?.. Sherry?
Jane?
🙂 x