The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Spalding Amateur Dramatic Society is bringing a classic British comedy to the big stage.
Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em is set in the 1970s era of the hit BBC TV show, celebrating both its 50th anniversary and the death of its writer Raymond Allen earlier this year.
It starred Michael Crawford as the hapless Frank Spencer and Michelle Dottrice playing his long suffering wife Betty.
SADOS is one of the first community theatre groups to be granted a performance licence for this play, which ended its professional tour in August 2022, starring Joe Pasquale as Frank.
The stage play bases itself around the lives of the Spencers. Betty is pregnant but as she attempts to tell Frank, he is preoccupied by possible new-found fame as a magician.
With guests arriving for dinner and crossed wires all round – priceless misunderstandings end up bringing the house down – quite literally!
The director Andrew Rudd pitched his idea of this play to the SADOS committee back in January last year, wanting to resurrect the old-fashioned humour and innocence of this newly available stage play.
A spokesman for SADOS said: “Auditions were held in April and the cast of six have been working tremendously hard with rehearsals ever since.
“The role of Frank Spencer is played by Charlie Russell.
“His performance has developed into his own version of Frank (as we are not able by the licence to emulate any of the previous professional actors) and he will find it very hard to shake the many nuances he has had to adopt for the role once this play has ended!
“There is only one page of the play that does not involve Frank – the first one and then he never leaves!
“The rest of the cast have all performed before in theatre and musical productions with SADOS; bringing real talent and comedic elements to their characters.”
Jessica Forbes as Betty Spencer, Jane Moss as her mother Barbara Fisher, Paul Coleman (acting this time, not producing or directing) playing the bank manager, Lauren Lee playing a camera operator and police constable and performing in his first drama rather than a musical for the society is Geran Jackson playing Father O’Hara.
“We have all laughed, run about the stage and knit together as a real team within the Spencer family.”
Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em is on at The South Holland Centre from Wednesday, November 8 to Saturday, November 11 at 7.30pm each night.
Tickets are £12 or £10 each for groups of more than 10.
Tickets are available at www.southhollandcentre.co.uk
