'Lockdown in Little Grimley' and 'Murder in Little Grimley' by David Tristram
23 June 2022
We had only recently discovered the TADS amateur theatre group in our neighbouring village, Toddington, when we saw their hilarious production of David Tristram's wonderfully silly detective spoof 'Inspector Drake and the Black Widow' in 2009 (reviewed here April 2009). Since then we've been back to the lovely little TADS Theatre to see three more 'Inspector Drake' plays. On Saturday we were at TADS to see two one-act plays by David Tristram from his Little Grimley series about a less than perfect amateur theatre group. 'Lockdown in Little Grimley' saw the fictional company's four actors reuniting to work on their first post Covid production (complete with plenty of jokes about toilet rolls and facemasks). And 'Murder in Little Grimley' further stretched the boundaries of meta fiction with the Toddington amateur theatre group playing the Little Grimley amateur theatre group devising a new murder mystery play about the death of a sweet shop owner whilst also becoming implicated in the actual death of a sweet shop owner. These plays reminded me of The Farndale Avenue Housing plays (such as 'The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society’s Production of Macbeth’ - a comedy by William Shakespeare, David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jnr, reviewed here in November 2016). Both Little Grimley plays had the characteristic David Tristram zany surreality and corny gags, though they felt a bit slight compared to the Inspector Drake plays. But David Sachon's production was great fun with a very strong cast and it was lovely to see some TADS regulars again after the long break imposed by the pandemic.
posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:41 pm
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