This institution has got themed for 2012. The thrilling prospect promised by the title is not quite realised but a fair to middling set of plays is redeemed by a strong final effort.
10,000 Cigarettes by Alex Broun
This big hit of 2006 makes a welcome return. It starts as a poetic homage to the much-maligned weed from a quartet of devotees. This being the era of health, there is a darker twist in the tail.
Undress Me Clarence by Doug Grissom
Undress Me Clarence is a mildly risqué two-hander about a repressed middle-aged, middle class couple played by Cassandra Hodges and Bill Knowelden.
They indulge in some smutty breakfast chat, fulfilling the title, at least verbally.
Mind the Flak by Paul Randall
Using her own brand of Aussie Cockney, Elise Fabris plays a frustrated commuter keen to escape King’s Cross Underground.
The invective is funny and she taps into the frustrations that all of us feel, though the pay-off doesn’t live up to a highly promising start.
Stake Out by Jane Miller
This playlet sees a pair of women following the man that was the husband of one and is the lover of the other as he two-times them both. One then bitches about the other in a suitably soapy fashion.
Quiet Table for Four by Philip Lindsell
Quiet Table for Four is a little gem. It introduces the unique concept that each of us has a malign inner voice persuading us to feel insecure and behave badly. This is then overlaid on to a blind date between characters played by Cassandra Hodges and Bill Knowelden.
Egged on respectively by the pick of the performers, Eve Kagan and Scott Virgo, they get into a horrible mess, before finally discovering self-assertion, which is more than the comic waitress manages.