The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society (FAHETGDS) lead by the redoubtable Mrs Reece (superbly played by Jo Jefferson) recently descended on Pateley Bridge, and with the skilful assistance of the Pateley Bridge Dramatic Society, brought chaos and hilarity to the stage with their “Drama Festival” version of Macbeth.

For those who have not seen a FAHETGDS performance, the basic plot is, on the face of it, simple. It concerns the trials and tribulations of an amateur drama group staging a play - well, destroying a play if the truth be known. The result is an am-drammers  worst nightmare. 

Anything that can go wrong does.

Props move, are the wrong way round, have a mind of their own or don’t work, lighting and sound cues are late, there is a constant need for improvisation and the dialogue gets stuck, as the players, who have to play a number of different roles, lose their way with the script and repeat the same lines time and time again.

All very familiar to this reviewer! However, it is one thing doing this unintentionally but quite another when working from a script and making it look authentic. To do so requires no small amount of skill from both cast and production team and this was clearly evident, thanks to Linda Harvey's expert direction.

It was a pleasure to see Nevin Ward move seamlessly from Henry, the oddjob man , to Lady Macbeth with a skill that has clearly been honed by years of playing a pantomime dame. In between he also found the energy to be 8 Kings!

Peter Buller, the adjudicator, Mr Peach, bemused the majority of the audience with his adjudication, but did most of it in “drag” much to everyone’s delight, which finally explained why he spent most of the evening applying  various layers of make-up, whilst purporting to watch the play.

Central to this play, of course, are the 3 witches and in this performance it was no exception as Dawn, Felicity and Kate (Debbie Forsyth, Ruth Dodsworth and Carol Bailey) cackled away merrily, with Kate becoming increasingly infirm as the play progressed - she ended  up playing the role in a wheel chair! The three actresses were very funny in a wide variety of other comedic roles.

Rachel Smith as the vengeful Thelma playing Macbeth & Ross and Heather Appleton as the hapless Minnie playing Banquo and Lady Macduff’s son were both excellent.

Finally we come to David Plummer, the Director played by Keith Burton, who seemed to have a somewhat inconsequential part until, due to the time strictures of a festival play, he was forced to move the play on at a quite alarming pace which brought the house down.

A great evening’s entertainment in a wonderful  venue.

[This review appeared in the Ackrill's press - Pateley Bridge & Nidderdale Herald, Ripon Gazette, Wetherby News, Harrogate Advertiser, etc. - on 5 July 2012]

Review by Barry Gill

Photographs by Chris Iredale