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Martins
Bank Society of the Arts Drama Section in: The Late Lamented by Falkland L
Cary
 Staged:
20 March 1951 in the Music Room at Head Office
Striving far more to EARN laurels, rather than to rest upon
them, the Drama Section of the Society of the Arts presents its final
offering under that name before the Liverpool District becomes regularly
acquainted with the Argosy Players. Performed at Head Office for an audience
of staff and Society Members, “The Late Lamented” by Falkland L Cary is
supposed to be a black comedy – dealing with poisoning, infidelity and
flashbacks to happier times.
The review of this production appears in Martins Bank
Magazine’s Summer 1951 issue, and as this play was not staged for the public,
the critique is short and sweet, and there is just one production
photograph. The staff will probably
not have known at the time how important such photographs and written
articles would be in the future, but we certainly are eternally grateful to
those who maintained the tradition of reviewing and depicting more than one
hundred and thirty plays, shows and operas, staged by the Bank’s five amatuer
dramatic and operatic societies between 1946 and 1969…
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 This play,
by Falkland L. Cary, is somewhat macabre in theme, but contrives,
nevertheless, to be quite funny. The scene is the day of the funeral of
George, who has really been murdered by an overdose of morphia administered
by his wife who is in love with George's doctor. The ghost of George,
unseen except by the audience, appears and listens with sardonic enjoyment
to the proceedings leading up to his funeral. Rex Pollock took the part of
George and gave it the exact amount of humour required. His long monologue,
in which he expresses the thoughts going through the mind of his widow as
she reclines on the couch waiting for the funeral to begin, was most
effective and his general restraint gave real credibility to the part.
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Rex Pollock Maureen Dempster Barbara
Griffith Kathleen Horsburgh and J K Cornall
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The
role of murderess is a new one for Maureen Dempster and she worked it up
very well, having all our sympathy at the beginning and none whatever at
the end; a very tidy performance. Barbara Griffith, as the gushing Mrs. Abernethy
who says all the wrong things, plays this kind of part supremely well, and
Kathleen Horsburgh as the grief-stricken maid gave us a very neat portrayal
of this character part.
The
part of the doctor was taken by J. K. Cornall and we were rather relieved
that the portrayal eventually reasserted the moral rectitude of the medical
man who, though he might carry on an affair with another man's wife, did
not want to be mixed up with murder, for we felt that Ken was more at home
in the part towards the end than at the beginning and that his performance
improved as the play evolved. Barbara Phillips was the producer and T. R.
Owens stage-managed.
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Martins Bank Archive Collections 1988 to date.
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