Review: CASH ON DELIVERY, The Mill at Sonning
Photo credit: Carla Joy Evans
The Mill at Sonning knows its core audience who enjoy a simple pre-theatre two course meal and then see a production in the intimate 215-seater auditorium. It’s part of its history and tradition to stage an old-fashioned English farce and a “Cooney” one features in most seasons’ programming alongside a thriller and a musical. This year, it is Michael Cooney’s (the son of Ray Cooney, the godfather of 1980’s sex comedies) farce Cash on Delivery that is served up for this loyal audience. It is clear from the gentle ripples of giggles as the chaos unfolds that they appreciate this style of theatre, but it does all feel a little dated and laboured.
Things are changing at the venue, with the traditional help yourself to all-you-can-eat buffet now gone and replaced by a straightforward meat and two veg offering with cheese and biscuits to follow, and tea and coffee being subject to new charges. The economics of running a producing house and restaurant for this size audience has clearly put the strain on the venue’s profitability and you can sense that they are navigating the challenges. The feeling of jeopardy is added to by the rising flood waters on the land around the site on all sides. More than ever, this venue needs our support, and each production needs to provide its own Cash on Delivery.
Cooney’s version of this drive for cash is to portray Eric Swan as a serial benefit fraudster, with multiple escalating claims over the last two years involving a large extended family of lodgers living in his home at 344 Chiltern Road in East London in 1996. The essence of great farce is that it starts with a believable scenario and each twist and turn seems a logical progression as the situation spins out of control to a ludicrous fast paced denouement. When we meet Swan, he is already overwhelmed by the scale of his fraud and is trying to find a way to bring it to an end. The parade of visitors who get embroiled in the chaos stretch our credulity when they arrive in quick succession to immediately add to misunderstandings, confusion and quickly made-up explanations. We are asked to suspend our disbelief but the pacing in the first half is so deliberate and slow that we are not sucked into believing any of it is plausible. There are some good comic moments, often in the pauses as characters desperately seek to explain the answer to a question just posed, or in carefully constructed exchanges of double meanings.
With a large cast of ten, there is plenty of scope for talking at cross purposes and with a set of four doors (Front, Kitchen, Bedroom and Dining Room) off the sitting room, with a stair to the lodger’s flat, an under stairs cupboard and a large chest under a window, plenty of entrances and exits to create the confusion. The cast, many familiar faces at the Mill at Sonning, do work hard to breathe some life into the situation, although none of them, unsurprisingly, truly convince that they believe what that they are saying. Steven Pinder carries the narrative as the world-weary exasperated Eric Swan with good support from the put upon and compliant lodger Norman (played by James Bassett), and Michael Shaw as the hapless co-conspirator Uncle George. Harry Gostelow is the gullible DHSS Inspector who is easily misled into repairing the offstage washing machine! Rachel Fielding as the bereavement councillor and Oscar Cleaver as the relationship arbiter find themselves drawn into confusion with an understandable bemused look. Natasha Gray as Swan’s wife is left to navigate the madness as she learns that her husband may be a cross dresser (“Cross? He is furious”) which seems to be more a concern than the large-scale fraud being revealed around her.
Perhaps it is just us, but benefit fraud does not seem to us to be a laughing matter. However, if you are sick of FA Cup football, the Winter Olympics and Six Nations Rugby on your TV screens, a trip to the Mill for a meal and a show remains an attractive alternative. We can confirm that this 90s farce satisfies their core audience but is unlikely to attract a wider younger audience and in the long run, that is what all venues like this need to do.
** Two stars
Reviewed by: Nick Wayne
Cash on Delivery plays at The Mill at Sonning until 4 April, with further info here.
This review was provided in return for a 2-course meal, drinks and tickets for the show.