Dinner Ladies make a great impression

Jul 7 2010 by Karen Wilson, The Journal

Dinnerladies at Newcastle Theatre Royal until Saturday

CONDENSING 16 episodes of a much loved sitcom into a two-act play is no mean feat but David Graham has managed to deftly pull this off with his adaptation of Victoria Wood’s Dinnerladies.

Such plays have become more commonplace in recent years with programmes such as Dad’s Army and Fawlty Towers also making the screen to stage transition. And since Dinnerladies was mostly filmed with just one set anyway, it was a prime candidate for such treatment.

Set in a Manchester factory canteen, Graham has taken all of Wood’s best lines and woven them into a tightly packed show where the laughs come thick and fast. The bitchy sparring between Dolly and Jean is typical (Dolly: “Who has sex on Christmas morning?” Jean: “The Dalai Lama.” Dolly: “Well, he must peel his sprouts the night before!”).

It wasn’t until a mention of the Lehman Brothers collapse towards the end that I even noticed a non-Wood line which couldn’t have been written in the 1990s.

And rightly, Graham has focused on Bren and Tony’s ‘will they, won’t they’ love story as the thread hanging everything together.

Some might say, why bother when you can buy the box set? And it’s a valid point. The stars of the TV series have moulded the characters so well that new actors can only hope to emulate their predecessors. Nobody wants to see new interpretations. As a result, it becomes an impressions show – the theatrical equivalent of a cover band. But from the reaction of the Newcastle audience (mostly female 50-somethings), that was exactly what they wanted.

So were the new cast as good as the original? I’m pleased to say almost, which is high praise indeed.

Even though the bar had been set high, the cast were superb with every verbal nuance, gesture and mannerism perfectly observed, particularly Laura Sheppard as Bren who seemed to morph into Victoria Wood when she smiled.

Tamsin Heatley, a prolific voiceover artist, was a real revelation as Bren’s fantasist mum Petula, a role nailed by Julie Walters. I could’ve sworn the audience were about to start clapping when she first spoke, as if she were a ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ contestant. However, they reserved their applause for her first exit. Only two cast originals reprised their roles, the brilliant Sue Devaney as loudmouth factory worker Jane and Andrew Dunn as Tony, who some may remember as spin doctor Alistair Campbell to Rory Bremner’s Tony Blair.

Both were on fine form. The only weak link was Roya Amiri as Anita (the dimwit) who seemed a bit stilted in the first act but much stronger in the second. You don’t need to have seen Dinnerladies to enjoy this show but fans with a box set are unlikely to be disappointed.

KAREN WILSON