Photos: Supplied.
Local actor Jill Tuckwood seems destined for the role of stage bride. She has played the poignant, wordless Ghost Bride in two Theatre Redlands Hallowe’en productions (When the Darkness Moves and Through the Dark Door) and is now rehearsing TR’s forthcoming play, There Goes the Bride, directed by Ray Noonan. This time around, she has lines.
“Having a speaking role is a bit outside my comfort zone,” she says. “I’m used to being in the band, playing alto sax or clarinet or working backstage. Being the Ghost Bride required focus and feeling but learning lines will be a whole new challenge!”
Jill’s Bride, while being the title role, is perhaps one of the more low-key characters in this classic comedy by John Chapman and Ray Cooney, who have written some of Britain’s most popular stage comedies. Surrounded by a family which includes a father who seems to be losing his wits – and his stiff British sense of propriety, a grandfather who slides effortlessly between reality and somewhere else, a grandmother who is the ultimate matriarch, an increasingly outraged father-in-law-to-be (perhaps); an intrusive bra model who might be her father’s lover – or not – and a mother who’s trying to hold it all together, poor dear Judy the Bride just wants to get married…Good luck with that.
Ray Noonan, a Theatre Redland’s principal, actor and director, selected the play for its cleverly-dialogued comedy.
“These are hard times; everybody needs to forget their troubles for a few hours and have a good laugh,” he says. “While it was written in the mid-seventies it embodies the classic sit-com device of unfolding a series of human foibles and inviting us to have a good laugh at ourselves.”
Ray’s casting includes well-loved favourites of the Redlands stage such as Chad Sherrin, Jim Gilbert and Diana Gogulski and introduces some new performers, in keeping with Theatre Redlands’ commitment to developing new untapped talent. And, of course, coaxing previously silent talent into speaking roles…
There Goes the Bride will play at Redland Museum Saturday 11 to Sunday 19 November; for bookings go to https://www.redlandmuseum.org.au/whats-on/events.
