Voilence is good for rehearsals

Nov 6 2008 By John Slim

* HIGHBURY Theatre Centre has called in a professional stunt man to steer its cast towards Tuesday’s opening night of A Touch of Danger.

Not that patrons at the Sutton Coldfield venue’s production of the Francis Durbridge thriller should expect being thrown down a flight of stairs or through a window.

Dean Williams, a martial arts expert who has worked on fights and stunts in films and television productions, has been showing the company how to react to being stabbed, strangled or faced with any violence.

It’s called choreography. You do have to fall or flail your arms with conviction if you’re not going to look, well, amateurish.

Director Barbara Garrett says: “People get bumped off, and there are particular ways of showing that it’s happening. So Dean spent an evening choreographing everything for us. It’s very physical.”

A Touch of Danger runs from November 11 to 22.

* COLESHILL Operatic Society’s centenary includes 42nd Street from March 30 at Solihull Library Theatre and HMS Pinafore at Coleshill Town Hall in July. This was the group’s first production, so the first half will be in 1909 style and the second in a modern version – all where it happened 100 years ago.

* HEALTH and Safety ensures that the Nonentities feel obliged to warn us about smoking scenes in The Memory of Water at the Rose Theatre, Kidderminster – at a recent evening at the Grange Playhouse, Walsall, featuring a dentist setting out candles for a romantic evening, the candles were never lit, of course. No prizes for guessing why.

* HERE’S an intriguing gem, thrown up by the Bilston Operatic Company production of Me and My Girl at the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton, from Tuesday to Saturday. The show, revised by Stephen Fry in 1984, is credited with making Emma Thompson, Robert Lyndsey, Gary Wilmot, Brian Conley, Lorraine Chase, Sue Pollard and Bonnie Langford.