Twinkle

Drayton Arms Theatre • 17th - 21st January

With Panto season having not long finished here in the UK, ‘Twinkle’ is a timely reminder that it’s not all rainbows, sunshine and a relentless amount of thigh-slapping behind the scenes of the brightly coloured sets and the painted-on smiles. Typically performing for audiences predominantly made up of restless children and their apathetic parents, for two shows a day during a 6 week run, it’s enough to test the mettle of any performer, and for veteran ‘Dame’ Harold Thropp the appeal has all but gone now that he is nearing the end of a lifelong career, donning a frock so old it is, “held together by pins and prayers”.

So it is that playwright Philip Meeks takes us behind the scenes to the less than glamorous setting of dressing Room 5, a rather dingy basement-room in a theatre where a brand new panto season is about to begin. It is here that Thropp finds himself relegated, a far cry from the days when he could command the slightly more salubrious surroundings of Dressing Room 1… a shift in his career he’s not exactly happy about.

What follows is a superbly realised monologue from Thropp, (played by Dereck Walker), as he reminisces on the changing face of a theatrical tradition that he clearly once had a lot of affection for, and having been a popular ‘turn’ back in it’s glory days he now finds himself mourning the transition of the star billing, once the preserve of bonafide professionals actors, now being dished out to soap stars and reality TV ‘personalities’, panto having long since been hi-jacked “by the money men, the power mad and the desperate”.

We learn that the much coveted Dressing Room 1 has been given to the main attraction of this years panto, a winner of a Big Brother style reality TV show, Jez Bookham. “He’s got no personality”, Thropp confides, “just a collection of disorders”. It is these sharp asides peppered throughout the script that lift Thropp’s rant far beyond that of a bitter old misanthrope who’s finding it hard to come to terms with his star being very much in decline. However, alongside the more affectionate reminiscences about his past glories, a distinct sense of melancholy hangs in the air, understandable given his is also a career that started during a time when homosexuality was still illegal. It is these personal recollections, running in parallel with his professional observations, that really gives this script it’s emotional heart and, as we watch this play just a few weeks from the start of gay history month, Twinkle has a lot to offer in terms of painting the all-to-tragic picture of a gay mans life before decriminalisation and how, even after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, many are still unable to shake the years of fear and shame that remain ever present in their lives to this day.

It can be sobering stuff, but Meeks skilfully manages to find plenty of humour in Thropps tale without ever trivialising it, and even during his more sobering recollections he recalls how as a younger man he had, “Balls on fire and the world at my feet!” during his big Saturday nights out at ‘the cottage’. Younger members of the audience may need to google the term, and whilst there’s no denying Twinkle will mostly resonate more to an audience of a certain age, the play succeeds in offering a powerful insight into a time gone by and the challenges the gay community faced in their struggle for equality. Yes, the play could have been brought a bit more up to date by swapping a reference to defunct high street chain Woolworths for a chain like Primark, and possibly having the star of the panto be a social media influencer, (Big Brother itself now feeling something of a historical reference… albeit returning to our screens later this year), but these are small quibbles for a production that has a surprising abundance of warmth and charm.

All the time, whilst telling his story, we are watching Thropp get ready to make another grand entrance on stage, gradually transforming into the Dame before our eyes, and whilst doing so Walker never misses a beat in his performance. In a final flourish Meeks provides us with a twist in the tale worthy of an episode of ’Alfred Hitchcock Presents’. You’ll get no spoilers from me as to what that might be, suffice to say Twinkle is a great example of how engaging a one man play can be. Assisted by David Shields stage design, Julian Starrs effective sound design, and Richard Lambert’s engaging lighting, LAMBCO productions clearly have another hit on their hands. Unfortunately this production only runs for 5 performances, but it has already been awarded an "OFFCOM”, a  well deserved commendation from the OFFIEs for a Short Run production.

★★★★

review: Simon J. Webb

photographs: Nick Brittain