For Creswick Theatre Company director Kerith Holmes, dealing with the constraints of such a small stage presents itself as both the beauty and the pain of working with the amateur production group.
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The quaint theatre on Raglan Street will stage an interpretation of the provocatively titled 2009 play Sex Please, We’re 60! later this week.
The specially created set features six doors for the six characters present in order to make the most of the limited space available.
“When we select works to go here you select things with the knowledge you have a limited space,” Ms Holmes said. “Sometimes it involves quite a lot of streamlining to make something work in a smaller space, but I quite like that challenge because it gives you a set of boundaries.
“We're really lucky we've got a building which we can live in and we can rehearse on the stage with a proper lighting set-up.”
Ms Holmes described the play as a “farce”, which centres around a small bed and breakfast. The American play focuses in on the relationships between a number of older inhabitants of the facility, in particular two older gentlemen, Bud ‘The Stud’ and Henry, a retired chemist.
While Bud’s main focus is on the regular female clientele, who he believes return for his company, Henry is more concerned with courting the facility manager Mrs Stancliffe. A mix-up between Bud’s viagra pills and Henry’s new, untrialed libido pill for menopausal women is the catalyst for a series of unfortunate events.
“It's a romp,” Ms Holmes said of the play. “It's very funny, there's lots of physical comedy with plenty of misunderstandings and confusions and each character is quite different from the other.”
Unlike some of the theatre’s more formal counterparts, the Creswick Theatre focuses on presenting amateur productions in a more laid back environment, with attendees encouraged to bring along their own food and drinks.
“It's a bit more like cabaret style so you can come and sit down around a table with friends so it's not high-brow theatre,” Ms Holmes said.
The play runs March 31 until April 8.