Rossendale Players offer up a kitchen sink drama

Kitchen sink by name kitchen sink by nature is the order of the day with the Rossendale Players’ opening production of their new season.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

“The Kitchen Sink” by up-and-coming playwright Tom Wells is, as the name suggests, a kitchen sink drama, focusing on the difficult lives of an East Yorkshire family headed by down-on-his luck milkman Martin.

Martin’s years old milkfloat is falling to pieces, a metaphor for his dying trade in a small town with few other opportunities. As he clings stubbornly on, we discover his more ambitous but no less troubled gay son Billy, desperate to escape the family himself and “find himself” at art school in London.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Billy’s big love, the music of Dolly Parton, is used expertly as a soundtrack throughout the play which manages to combine humour and pathos from its tight-knot cast. Using her as his muse, Billy frets whether he will be accepted by his “sophisticated” London art school friends and tutors.

Jamie Gane and Lauren Downes in The Kitchen SinkJamie Gane and Lauren Downes in The Kitchen Sink
Jamie Gane and Lauren Downes in The Kitchen Sink

Players regular Martyn Frost plays his namesake with the right degree of frustration and stubbornness while son Billy is played by newcomer Owen Davitt, who makes Billy perhaps the most likeable character in the whole production.

Holding it all together is the highly-strung but perhaps most level-headed of the group, matriarch Kath, played with great energy by regular Kathryn Bland.

Daughter Sophie, passionately portrayed by Lauren Downes, is a jiu-jitsu instructor whose tragic love of the defensive martial art becomes apparent later in the play. Would-be love interest Pete is played by Jamie Gane who manages to capture his social awkardness and frustration.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

As always, the Players have produced a perfect set and word-perfect acting in a production which has slapstick humour, sadness and hope.

Read More
Tennessee Williams' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' smoulders courtesy of Rossendale Pla...

Director Mark Storton brings the cast together in a tight performance which flows nicely without ever being too heavy or too cloying. Credit, too, should be given to all the unseen production crew and volunteers who give up their time to contribute to these productions.

It runs at the New Millennium Theatre every night this week until September 17th. Tickets are available via www.rossendaleplayers.org.uk or by calling 03336 663366.

Related topics: