Doing it again
This page lists the plays and playwrights that Chelsfield Players have produced most often over the years.
Most amateur societies have their favourite playwrights, and a glance at any society’s archive will list many of the same authors as Chelsfield’s: Shakespeare and classic writers such as Coward, Priestley, Wilde, Rattigan and Sheridan, alongside newer, mostly comic authors such as Ayckbourn, Harris and Cooney. Every society with a long enough history will have produced plays by most if not all of these playwrights.
Some actors and directors turn their noses up at the latter, and it is true that their output is often a little too comfortable and dated for high-minded tastes, reflecting as they do the petty struggles of the 1980s middle classes rather than providing searing insights into the human condition. But their plays are well crafted and audiences love them. Furthermore, they are very forgiving: even when a society has limited budgets and sometimes talent, a competent Ayckbourn production with no artistic flourishes and few intellectual challenges will still provide a fun evening’s entertainment, whereas a bad Lorca would be a disaster (although we have friends who say that even a brilliantly produced Lorca is a grim waste of an evening).
Throughout most of its history, Chelsfield has sought to balance art and entertainment. We hope that our artistic excursions have been entertaining and that our entertainments have had that artistic flourish. So, if we amused you with Lady Windermere’s Fan in summer 2009 (classic Wilde), you might have trusted us to challenge you that same autumn with Our Country’s Good (Australian convicts performing a play), followed by Hello Is There Any Body There? (a silly murder mystery spoof) and then A Wedding Story (lesbian romance and dementia).
Ayckbourn’s numbers are amplified by shows where we performed two or three of his one-act plays in an evening, resulting in 14 Ayckbourns being produced between his debut in 1990 and 2007, after which he had a well-earned rest. The same applies to John Cleese and Connie Booth, in that the first Fawlty Towers production comprised three episodes from the TV series and the second, destined for Edinburgh with its tighter time constraints, comprised two. Some might say that the total should therefore be two instead of five. We don’t because we paid the performing rights for five episodes, so there. Shakespeare is still playing catch-up because he was ignored by the Society for its first 24 years.
Note: We suspect that several plays performed in the decade after World War 2 were stage revivals of wartime productions performed in members’ houses. This would add one to some playwrights’ statistics, but the only such revival we can identify for sure is Elegant Edward.
This page lists the plays and playwrights that Chelsfield Players have produced most often over the years.
Most amateur societies have their favourite playwrights, and a glance at any society’s archive will list many of the same authors as Chelsfield’s: Shakespeare and classic writers such as Coward, Priestley, Wilde, Rattigan and Sheridan, alongside newer, mostly comic authors such as Ayckbourn, Harris and Cooney. Every society with a long enough history will have produced plays by most if not all of these playwrights.
Some actors and directors turn their noses up at the latter, and it is true that their output is often a little too comfortable and dated for high-minded tastes, reflecting as they do the petty struggles of the 1980s middle classes rather than providing searing insights into the human condition. But their plays are well crafted and audiences love them. Furthermore, they are very forgiving: even when a society has limited budgets and sometimes talent, a competent Ayckbourn production with no artistic flourishes and few intellectual challenges will still provide a fun evening’s entertainment, whereas a bad Lorca would be a disaster (although we have friends who say that even a brilliantly produced Lorca is a grim waste of an evening).
Throughout most of its history, Chelsfield has sought to balance art and entertainment. We hope that our artistic excursions have been entertaining and that our entertainments have had that artistic flourish. So, if we amused you with Lady Windermere’s Fan in summer 2009 (classic Wilde), you might have trusted us to challenge you that same autumn with Our Country’s Good (Australian convicts performing a play), followed by Hello Is There Any Body There? (a silly murder mystery spoof) and then A Wedding Story (lesbian romance and dementia).
Ayckbourn’s numbers are amplified by shows where we performed two or three of his one-act plays in an evening, resulting in 14 Ayckbourns being produced between his debut in 1990 and 2007, after which he had a well-earned rest. The same applies to John Cleese and Connie Booth, in that the first Fawlty Towers production comprised three episodes from the TV series and the second, destined for Edinburgh with its tighter time constraints, comprised two. Some might say that the total should therefore be two instead of five. We don’t because we paid the performing rights for five episodes, so there. Shakespeare is still playing catch-up because he was ignored by the Society for its first 24 years.
Note: We suspect that several plays performed in the decade after World War 2 were stage revivals of wartime productions performed in members’ houses. This would add one to some playwrights’ statistics, but the only such revival we can identify for sure is Elegant Edward.
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Most performed plays
The Rivals (1949, 1976, 2003) Elegant Edward (1939-45, 1955) Cinderella (1947, 1965) The Importance Of Being Earnest (1947, 2004) This Happy Breed (1947, 2015) Dangerous Corner (1948, 2002) The Ghost Train (1949, 2024) Hay Fever (1960, 1991) Pygmalion (1961, 1986) A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1961, 2006) A Christmas Carol (1962, 2010) The Hollow (1967, 2019) Murder In Company (1985, 2003) Time and Time Again (1993, 1999) Mother Figure (1995, 2019) Between Mouthfuls (1995, 2019) |
Most performed playwrights
Alan Ayckbourn 14* William Shakespeare 9 Noël Coward 7 John Cleese & Connie Booth 5* Emlyn Williams 4 John Chapman 3 Maurice McLoughlin 3 Amanda Whittington 3 |
Campbell & Dorothy Christie 2
Peter Coke 2 Constance Cox 2 Charles Dickens 2 Francis Durbridge 2 Charles Raymond Dyer 2 William Douglas Home 2 Kenneth Horne 2 Ronald Jeans 2 Somerset Maugham 2 Ian McCutcheon 2 André Obey 2 Arthur Wing Pinero 2 Arnold Ridley 2 Norman Robbins 2 George Bernard Shaw 2* Sandy Taylor 2 Edgar Wallace 2 Thornton Wilder 2 |
* includes shorter plays with more than one play per production but excludes excerpts performed in revue-style productions
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