REVIEW: THE CHERRY ORCHID at Drayton Arms 17 – 28 September 2024

‘Sh*t jokes, “hyper” actors and a play like flat lemonade’ ★★☆☆☆

“Homeowner” (we never learn their name) is obsessive about cleanliness and their prize cherry orchid. When an assassin decides to use their home as a safe house, things get messy, as successive hitmen sent to kill him find themselves dead. Puerile humour takes skill to carry off, and when done well is side splittingly funny. Sadly, that skill was lacking in both the writing and execution of this show.

Gregor Copeland and Tom Lane who played the two central characters spent most of the show shout-acting, and I couldn’t tell if this was because of how they were directed or because they were trying to compensate for poor writing. Whatever the cause, it made for a very “one note” performance, even though the actors’ had great stage presence, particularly Hannah Clancy-Hughes who played the succession of characters that end up dead.

Great comedy comes from well-conceived characters, but in The Cherry Orchid, it felt like Callum McArthur had thought of things that he found funny and forced the characters, particularly that of the assassin, to fit around those things. This made the jokes jarring rather than funny, and the characterisation inconsistent.

There was a clever device for getting the “bodies” off stage, which I won’t spoil in case you see The Cherry Orchid. The idea of the play was great, and though many of the “jokes” were telegraphed, the twist in the tale was well masked and worked well. However, the unnecessary last scene epitomised all that was wrong with the show.

I was willing this production to do well as I admire the mission of Broken Gods Productions, which is to “support and uplift the community through the power of theatre”. But if wishes were fishes, we’d all swim in riches, and sadly this production had too few of those.

The Cherry Orchid by Callum McArthur, Drayton Arms, Broken Gods Productions, 17-28 September 2024 https://www.thedraytonarmstheatre.co.uk/the-cherry-orchid

Performers: Gregor Copeland, Tom Lane, Hannah Clancy-Hughes

Reviewer: Srabani Sen

Srabani is a theatre actress and playwright. As an actress she has performed at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (The Globe), the Arcola, Southwark Playhouse, The Pleasance and numerous fringe theatres, in a range of roles from Shakespeare to plays by new and emerging writers. She has written several short and full length plays. Her play Tawaif was longlisted for the ETPEP Finborough award, and her play Vijaya was shortlisted for the Sultan Padamsee Playwrights Award in Mumbai.