Globe’s over-the-top play all about fun

In Charley’s Aunt, two students wanting to propose to the women they love and in need of a chaperone, convince their friend to impersonate a woman. Dylan Shield, who plays their friend, Lord Fancourt Babberley, is seated at the piano. Other cast members are (from left) Gretel Moore, Claire Freel, Reuben Hilder, Thomas Makinson, Sofie Welvaert and Miguel Nitis. Photo: Peter McIntosh.

Getting into character or memorising lines haven’t been the main issues for the cast of the Globe Theatre’s latest production.

"The biggest challenge has been maintaining a straight face," Reuben Hilder says.

"It’s very funny."

Written in 1892, Charley’s Aunt broke all records for plays of any kind, running for 1466 performances over four years at London’s Globe Theatre. Since then, it has been regularly revived and, according to director Brian Beresford, become a classic.

The farcical comedy of young and older love begins with the attempts of Charley and Jack, Oxford undergraduates played by Hilder and Thomas Makinson, to meet with the young women they hope to marry.

Kitty and Amy are about to leave town and social conventions dictate that the men need a chaperone in order to be able to see them, Hilder explains.

"We invite them around because my aunt is about to show up."

"Then she sends a message to say she can’t come so we pressure our good friend, Lord Fancourt [played by Dylan Shield] into pretending to be her."

Nothing, however, goes to plan, particularly when the real aunt shows up halfway through and immediately figures out what is going on.Shield says the play has some "wonderful" Victorian melodramatic elements: "The overbearing baron who is the villain of the piece, the good-hearted military colonel and the underplaying and overplaying of status and power, where the butler’s the one who is in the know [with] all the information, all the intelligence and all the money, [whereas] us toffs at the top are all idiots."

The three actors in the student roles say it was initially a struggle for them to "ham it up and be completely over-the-top" but in a farce, things cannot be understated.

"We also involve the audience quite a lot," Makinson says, "talking directly to them and occasionally throwing a facial expression at them in precarious situations on stage."

Makinson, a university student, and Hilder, who recently completed his studies, are cousins who have appeared at the Globe before but never been in a show together. Shield, an optical assistant, started acting classes at the Globe when he was 8 and has spent 14 years acting and directing at the Playhouse, mostly for children’s productions.

While Beresford found it difficult to create three different scenes in the small Globe space, Shield has to hurriedly change on stage from trousers and striped jacket to evening gown and wig and to speak in falsetto, intentionally making his voice crack. Vocal exercises are a must.

"There’ll be a lot of humming and a lot of tea and honey before the show starts. I’m hoping my voice can survive it and I’m not stuck talking like that forever ... But I’m always keen to do self-deprecating roles. They get a lot of good laughs."

As well as showing that courting in the 19th century was more complicated than it needed to be, the play pokes fun at England’s upper classes, the idea of marrying for money and the obsessive need for wealth to maintain appearances, the actors say.

Brandon Thomas, the son of a bootseller, wrote it at a time when England’s elite essentially "told everyone what to do", Beresford adds. From Oxford and Cambridge, graduates might take up politics, go into the church or into military service somewhere in the British Empire. Many of them were "not very bright", but they were extremely rich and believed themselves to be superior to the lower classes and to other cultures.

"The play encompasses that in the way it works," he says, "but it isn’t about that ... There isn’t a moral in it at all. It’s just fun."

The theatre-in-a-house

The Globe Theatre at 104 London St, Dunedin, was created in the early 1960s when Patric and Rosalie Carey converted their living room into a small auditorium. This was later modified into a 72-seat theatre, which is run by an incorporated society staging about six shows a year. Last year, the property was redeveloped after a major fundraising effort.

See it

Charley’s Aunt opens tonight  and runs until December 17.