Has it really been a decade already?
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After the bards of the Valley came together over a cuppa 10 years ago, the Valley Performers (VPs) was born.
With many VPs thespians actively engaged in theatre shenanigans for several decades, the eclectic group now boasts a wealth of theatrical knowledge enabling them to continuously turn out slick productions year after year, including a series of radio skits performed to aid in saving the historic Bowraville Theatre.
“One of the times one of our props ‘malfunctioned’ when a garbage bin half-full of water split and water flooded the stage..... but the show went on!” member Karen Forbes said.
“There’s always fun and mishaps on stage during rehearsals. We have fun staging the shows, but there’s also a lot more in between too: the women love playing with hair, costumes, and makeup when the play is set in a ‘period’, such as our current one, which is set in the 1970s.”
The VPs are celebrating their 10th consecutive year of entertaining the sketch-hungry masses of the Nambucca Valley with a ripper of a production: the Hotbed Hotel by American playwright Michael Parker.
Never ones to be schooled by a Yank, the cast has relocated the play to give it a more ‘Strayan’ flavour.
Set on the Goldie in the suss seventies, the Fawlty Towers-inspired bedroom farce is about to go off like a bucket of prawns in the sun.
The Codys are trying to sell their unprofitable one-star hotel to the highest [read ONLY] bidder, but a collection of colourful characters make the process like manoeuvring through a minefield with a manic macropod.
What will happen when a bible-bashing wowser, sauced reverend, voracious nympho, gold-diggin’ Sydney sheila, sly sugar-daddy and pontificating Pom meet? Hilarity, that’s what.
While the cast carries on like a tray of pork chops, you’ll be hard-pressed not to be taken along for the riotous ride.
And remember, there’s no more sure-fire way to warm up in the cold weather than with a good ol’ belly laugh.
The set, painstakingly engineered by Karl Dunkel, is dripping with kitsch.
If it doesn’t have you cresting on waves of nostalgia, it’ll certainly have you scratching your head and wondering how we ever let ourselves think those colours worked together.
And just when you thought your eyes had gotten off lightly, the cast are ready to knock your cotton socks off with an ensemble of costumes and hairstyles that should never have been let out of the seventies: can you say, mutton chops, mullets, Farrah flicks, flares, platforms and safari suits? Strewth.
The Hotbed Hotel premieres next Friday evening from 7.30pm at the Nambucca Community and Arts Centre. The season runs for two weeks and will show the usual Saturday and Sunday matinees from 2pm. Tickets are $20, or $15 for concession holders.
And to celebrate a continuing friendship with the local Nambucca Valley Cancer Support Group, they’ll be holding a raffle during the final week of performances.
Proceeds from raffles held in previous years have helped this incredible local group of volunteers secure their own purpose-built state-of-the-art facility in the soon-to-be-built Macksville Hospital.
Make sure you tee up a date with your mates to get along to this one – you’ll be spitting chips if you miss it!