PLAY IT AGAIN: Actors Daniel Gillett and Gina Halbisch at rehearsal for Daylight Saving.
Daylight Saving is set to start in Tamworth on Friday, July 20 – and it’s a dramatic production hoping to bring audiences to their feet and the curtain down on a special nightly play.
This latest daylight saving phenomenon is not the real thing for summer days, but the latest production of the Tamworth Dramatic Society.
It will open on that night for eight performances and follows the society’s full-house staging of The Mousetrap earlier this year, the most successful play ever staged by the society.
Earlier this year it was still running in London after 60 years.
This time around the humour replaces the suspense as the dramatic theme for the stage show.
Society president Rosie Crossing said rehearsals for the play were coming to their end, the set had been completed and everything was on track for another exciting production.
Daylight Saving is the award-winning Australian comedy from Nick Enright and is being directed by society
stalwart Bill Gleeson.
The old stage motto of “break-a-leg” to forecast good luck for a production has already been invoked for Daylight Saving – Gleeson has undergone a knee reconstruction in the run-up to this, but is back home after surgery and being laid up, legless.
He’s overseeing the final rehearsals and like Crossing, he believes audiences will enjoy the comedy and turn out again to watch local talent strutting the stage at the Capitol Theatre.
“It’s a very funny, clean, well-written play that has had huge success wherever it has played in Australia,” Gleeson said.
“It sits well within the TDS policy of presenting at least one Australian play each year.”
Daylight Saving is set on Sydney’s Pittwater in 1989 and follows disgruntled wife Felicity’s attempts to entertain her former lover, Josh, for dinner while her husband, Tom, is away with his tennis protege, Jason.
There are telephone call interruptions, the arrival of her north-shore mother Bunty, and a frenetic neighbour Stephanie. Coupled with her own hysterical agenda, it plays havoc with Felicity’s plans for a romantic sunset on the deck in the last hour before the clocks go back.
“Daylight Saving is our last production for this year and it will give us time to prepare for next year’s opening show which is the world- acclaimed Calendar Girls,” Crossing said.
“Our policy is to continue to try and bring to Tamworth award winning plays to entertain audiences and allow local actors a chance to showcase their skills. Daylight Saving, Calendar Girls, and later Mother and Son, all fit into this scenario.”
The play is on the 2012 Capitol Theatre subscription list and bookings are already being taken and can be made at the Capitol box office or at Destination Tamworth.
Performances include two matinees and the curtain goes down on the final Daylight Saving show after the 2pm
Sunday, July 29 production.