Director Jarrad West says Play On! is a comedy that will strike a chord with anyone who's ever been involved in, or seen, an amateur theatre production. It's the story of a group – in this production dubbed the Queanbeyan Musical and Amateur Dramatic Society trying to put on a play against all odds. Act One is a rehearsal of the play-within-a-play; Act Two is the dress rehearsal; and Act Three is the performance, of Murder Most Foul, an Agatha Christie-style play in which the writer didn't realise a character actually had to be killed until it was pointed out to him.
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"He thinks murder is so uncouth," West says,
"That's what I like about it – it's funny to the point of ridiculous."
But that's far from the only problem.
"The actors are all fighting and the crew are all revolting – in both senses," West says.
"The playwright is always giving them new scenes to learn, changing the script every five minutes and the director is just trying to keep it all together without having a nervous breakdown."
While some have compared the play to Michael Frayn's Noises Off – another comedy about putting on a play – West says Play On! speaks to him more because it's about amateur theatre, not the professional world.
It's a particularly personal show for West – and not just because of his own long involvement in local theatre as an actor, director and producer.
"For me it's a show I grew up with," he says.
"I remember when I was about nine or 10 my mother was involved in a production of it, she was in it in Perth. When I was 19 or 20 I was in it (he played the playwright) and my mother was in it."
Then he moved to Canberra and Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre program manager Stephen Pike wanted to produce a comedy in 2016. West suggested he direct Play On! – and asked his mother Marion to come over from Perth and play Aggie the stage manager, the role she had played twice before. It's the first time he's directed her in a show.
She says, "I always seem to get landed with Aggie. She's a tricky role – I've seen her played by other companies where she's played straight and she fades into the background...she has some very funny lines but if you play her straight, if you play her physicality straight, you lose the point of the lines."
Aggie, she says, is not incompetent, but she appears to be, because she speaks only when necessary.
"She has a laconic manner about her and you get the feeling there's not a lot to her but when she does say something you get to realise, 'Oh, she does have a bit of personality'."
As the stage manager, the responsibility for the show running smoothly rests on her shoulders, but Aggie is up against it, with the constant revisions of the egomaniacal playwright and the problems caused by the rest of the cast and crew.
Marion West aside, they're enacted by an experienced group of Canberra actors. Tony Turner and Liz St Clair Long play Henry and Polly, the stalwarts of the company, who play Lord Dudley and Lady Margaret in Murder Most Foul. Riley Bell is leading man Billy, who plays billionaire Stephen Sellers, and Steph Roberts is the ingenue, Violet, who plays socialite Diana Lassiter. Duncan Driver is Saul, the company's character actor, who takes on the role of Dr Rex Forbes, and Sian Harrington is newcomer Smithy, who plays Doris the maid.
The other offstage roles, besides Aggie, are Gerry the director, played by Liz Bradley, Louise the techie (Micki Beckett) and the playwright, Phillip (Bradley McDowell).
Marion West began performing in Western Australia in the 1970s but latterly has moved into offstage roles in theatre like props and assistant stage manager looking after the cast with the Garrick Theatre Company there – though unlike Aggie, she refuses to work as the stage manager, keeping the show on track during performance.
"I've seen stage managers placed in terrible predicaments when the cast is onstage and they have to be able to instantly respond – I go into a terrible flurry," she says.
She decided to return to an onstage role and the part of Aggie because her son was directing Play On!
"We've had some heated discussions – he always wins," she says.
"He's the director."
But she's enjoying the experience and says the depth of talent in Canberra theatre is extraordinary.
Both mother and son say they've experienced their share of theatrical disasters, though none quite on the level of the ones experienced by the characters in Play On! Props that don't work, actors who are drunk, or who freeze on their lines – all have happened and had to be dealt with somehow.
Jarrad West tells of one such time. He was in a scene with another actor and had just spoken the line, "I don't want to speak to you again" whereupon a third actor was to enter, except she didn't.
"Since our characters didn't like each other there was nothing to talk about so we just stood there. After what felt like an extraordinarily long time I just said, 'I'll just go and see about something'."
Play On! by Rick Abbot. Directed by Jarrad West. Queanbeyan City Council. Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. May 10-14, 18-21. Bookings: 6285 6301 or theq.net.au.
