Yesterday it was the salsa class. Coming up is the panto. On other days, it may be anything from language lessons to arts and crafts. Today in this multipurpose venue, it is the turn of the annual Christmas fair, with its bric-a-brac stalls, grotto and tree. Sitting on four sides of the elegant ballroom in Chadderton town hall, a refuge for Oldham Coliseum during renovations, we require no leap of the imagination to picture ourselves at a genuine local fundraiser.
That gives Jim Cartwright’s 2012 play a built-in sense of community. Director Jimmy Fairhurst keeps the house lights up, save for the most poignant speeches, and expects us to clap along to the Christmas hits and cheer the young carol singers as if they were children of our own. Blurring the fact/fiction divide, the interval is less a break in the action than a chance to buy the scented candles and prints by Oldham artists that are otherwise part of the set.
The site-specific hall has its disadvantages. The acoustics are poor and the focus bounces unpredictably around the space, sucking the life out of Cartwright’s jokes. Surprisingly for Fairhurst, whose Not Too Tame company specialises in boisterous entertainment and direct address, there is little audience interaction.
But there is a chaotic appeal in the playwright’s structural conceit. The show opens with the caretaker (Lee Toomes) sweeping up an empty space which, with the arrival of bossy Veronica (Samantha Robinson), enthusiast Lucy (Kelise Gordon-Harrison), the vicar (Dickon Tyrrell) and lefty writer Johnny (Paddy Stafford), gradually fills with tables laden with trinkets, toys and teddy bears. Before the night is through, it will all be cleared away again. It is not exactly Works and Days, the wordless Belgian show that built a whole house on stage, but it has a pleasing materiality.
A breezy first half contrasts with a weightier second, in which the characters take turns to reveal their demons in aria-like soliloquies. The speeches are dramatically inert, back-story reflections instead of present-tense action, but heartfelt for all that. Bathed in goodwill-to-all-men sentiment and acted with charm, it amounts to a slight but wholesome seasonal alternative.
