26th to 28th October 2023

Returned Empty

Written and directed by Wendy Freeman

Cast List

A Slice of Life

By Derek Olson

Directed by Mark Chapman
(with special thanks to Stephen Dallyn)

Cast List

Production team

Notes

From the Prompter’s chair

Imagine you are at a performance of a play. You are not in the audience. You are not a member of the cast, yet you are sitting on the stage, but no one can see you. Not seen and hopefully not heard, who are you? You are the prompter, part of the team that helps everything run smoothly. Your job is to follow every word spoken by every actor so that if anyone forgets a word or a line, you can supply it to them in such a way that the performance continues seamlessly.

This is quite a responsibility. One lapse in concentration and you can lose your place, making you quite unable to supply the word exactly when it is needed. Attending numerous rehearsals helps you to learn the play and get familiar with it along with the cast. It is important to understand the stage directions so that you know when there is no dialogue, and you do not prompt when it is not required. Members of the cast will give you more precise guidance with this, especially when there is a deliberate silence, to emphasise the last line.

This experience gives you a much deeper understanding of the play. As a member of the audience, you would not have read it or heard it in advance, and you would not be aware of the detailed preparation that goes into the public performance. Each actor brings their own talent and interpretation of the part they have to play, whilst the director tells them how to deliver certain key lines and how to interact with other members of the cast.

Then there is the stage management, the props, and the costumes as well as the lighting, sound effects and the incidental music. Within a strict budget, each of these aspects must be right. Being part of the community, the Ockley Dramatic Society knows how and where to get the materials it needs and each of us knows what has to be done to set the stage and prepare the Hall.

The prompter gets inside knowledge of every aspect of the production and benefits from getting to know the team. As with every endeavour, preparation is key. Are there any risks? It is possible to overthink the narrative and make fanciful interpretations of the story, but if the director and even the author are on hand, that is not likely to last long!

It’s a great experience watching the transformation of a written text into a live, dramatic performance. The following reviews are based on the experience of being the prompter through five rehearsals and three performances at the end of which the cast was word perfect. The two plays were performed on three nights at the end of October as part of the continuing celebration of the Ockley Dramatic Society’s 75th Anniversary.

Returned Empty

Violet Casey is an experienced manager of an off-licence in the 1990’s. At that time, an off-licence sold alcohol for consumption off the premises. Mrs Casey has already met all sorts of customers, but now she is confronted by far the most awkward.

Within the first minute of this play, Mrs Casey, and Renee her young new assistant meet a customer whose name is never mentioned, but who is referred to as Ciderman because of the bizarre transaction he wants to make.

Ciderman makes three visits in all to the off-licence, each one more exasperating to Mrs Casey and Renee. It gradually transpires that he has two hundred empty cider bottles which he claims he bought from them and for which he wants a refund on the empties.

First, he produces two empty bottles which Mrs Casey, after examining them intently, is confident he hadn’t bought from her. Renee (who is good at maths) points out that the refund would only be eight pence. Ciderman loses his temper and makes a very unpleasant threat. The atmosphere lightens on the arrival of PC Turner who comes in to buy crisps and a Coke.

As Mrs Casey and Renee try to make sense of what has happened, Ciderman is back. This time, he starts with an apology and an offer to bring up bottles from the stock room. Already cautious, Mrs Casey accepts but decides to go with him. As they approach the stock room, Ciderman doubles back, grabs the key to the door and locks her in. Renee returns and realises what Ciderman is doing. She demands the key and refuses to open the till and let Ciderman take the money he thinks he is owed.

Luckily, PC Turner returns in the middle of the resulting tussle between Ciderman and Renee, calms them down and rescues Mrs Casey. PC Turner, an avuncular policeman with a Baldrick type voice, makes Ciderman leave and then gets out his pocketbook and pencil to start a report. He begins by questioning Mrs Casey who protests, pointing out that he has let the suspect go.

A clearly underage boy comes in to ask, with precocious taste, for twenty Benson and Hedges. Renee asks for his ID, which he doesn’t have, and he leaves empty handed.

Ciderman returns, this time with a bunch of flowers as a peace offering. Mrs Casey, still indignant, tells him to go but relents when he offers to make a purchase. Then Renee has a lightbulb moment. She suggests that Ciderman take all the bottles to the bottle bank, an idea to which he warms, finally adopting it as his own. He leaves the off-licence.

We begin to think the story is about to end, but no. PC Turner unguardedly reveals Ciderman’s entire Police record going back to his university days. Just as Mrs Casey begins to help PC Turner with his report, Ciderman is spotted approaching the off-licence with a wheelbarrow full of the empties. As he gets closer, he starts throwing the bottles at the off-licence, breaking the windows, and showering them with glass.

The last thing we hear is Ciderman chuckling.

A Slice of Life

The flyer for this play described it as “A one act play with an edge”. That might be an understatement. It is an Alice in Wonderland of a play which can be understood at two very different levels.

A Slice of Life is set in the Ruby Rocket Diner where the menu boasts “Heavenly Food at a Devilishly Good Price”. The orders taken by the waitress Pat are for mundane items like cherry pie (Ruby Rocket’s speciality) and double bacon cheeseburgers, but these are not clues to what is really going on.

This American play, cleverly adapted for a British audience, ostensibly portrays the everyday lives of two couples, a wayward politician and a youngish reporter who has been lured there by a shadowy figure called Lucifer.

Whilst the two couples wrestle with their tangled relationships, Diane the reporter, joins Lucifer who has invited her for what Diane thinks is an interview. Lucifer says it is not an interview: she only wants to speak with her. As Pat mops up some spilled water, Lucifer leans over to help. The sudden move scares Diane who produces an iron bar and hurriedly explains that you need protection from the actual devil. But then a Crucifix might have afforded protection says Lucifer. This is our first clue to the real identity of Lucifer, which we had no reason to suspect because her name hasn’t been mentioned up to this point.

Diane perceptively says, “David Berkowitz thought he was sane”. The audience may or may not know that Berkowitz was a serial killer. Then the references become more precise making it clear that we should think of Lucifer as the devil incarnate. Lucifer seems to know everything about Diane.

Gradually we realise that Lucifer is saying Steve’s words as she is in a state in which her personal identity is suppressed. Eventually, Steve and Claire (one of the two couples) continue a normal conversation. Then, Lucifer looks at the other couple, Todd and Jean and reveals the complications in their relationship.

Malick the politician enters to collect his order of cheeseburgers. Lucifer tells Diane that his presence suggests he is up to no good, which could be a scoop item for her and her newspaper. Malick takes a call in a very amorous way, answering “Hey Gorgeous”. He rapidly changes his tone when he has to take a call from his wife and misleads her about what he is doing. Diane eavesdrops on these conversations.

Lucifer tells Diane that Malick has begun an affair with an intern. Diane thinks she should tail him to pursue the big story, but Lucifer warns her that although it could be very profitable, it isn’t the only option, and she should wait.

Steve decides that this is the moment to carry out his plan to offer Claire an engagement ring. It doesn’t go well. Claire feels she is being ambushed and rejects him. Malick cynically comments that marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He should know.

Lucifer tells Diane that everything is now in place for her to choose the right path. The choice (which she says is also the subject of a bet between Lucifer and God) is either to pursue Malick or save Steve from suicide which she thinks is likely following his rejection by Claire, and which is potentially a bigger story. Ever canny, Diane asks why she (Lucifer) doesn’t intervene and if not her, then the big one (God).

Lucifer says you must live by your own decisions and their consequences. Diane doesn’t know what to do. She says no one ever did anything for her, tells Lucifer to go to hell and rushes off.

Pat sits down with Lucifer and admits she lost the bet which Lucifer gladly accepts. Pat says, “you don’t have to be so smug about it” and Lucifer replies “hardly my fault, you made me this way”.

Get it?