Chase Me Comrade by Ray Cooney
Millie Sampson directed Chase Me Comrade for Wyong
Drama Group as the November production. WDG last performed the play thirty
years ago in 1981 (See 1981 Show Web Page).
In the 1960s Nureyev, the famous Russian ballet dancer, defected to the West.
It was a dramatic story of intrigue and high-level connivance. Just after the
event Ray Cooney wrote this play – the story of a defecting Russian ballet dancer
involved in intrigue and connivance at the highest level. During its three
year London run Nureyev himself saw the play several times and laughed as much
as the rest of the audience. It was Ray Cooney's second play (he went on
to write over twenty others). We have a web page listing all of Cooney's
plays and the years WDG have performed them (click
here for the Cooney Chronology)!
The year is 1964. Holding a top secret post in the Ministry of Defence,
Commander Rimmington, of Her Majesty's Navy, must watch appearances, and he is
not always pleased by the carryings-on of his impulsive daughter, Nancy.
Her latest escapade begins when her friend, ballerina Alicia Courtney, arrives
breathlessly to announce that the great Russian dancer, Petrovyan, has decided
to defect to the West-and that she has smuggled him out of London in the trunk
of the Commander's car. Complications set in at once. The house
where he is concealed belongs to a naval commander whose duty it would be to
hand him over to authority.
The first question is how to distract the Commander while Petrovyan is
sneaked into the house, but then, after the Commander goes off fishing, the
problems really begin to mount. An official appears with a coded message
for the Commander and, in an attempt to get rid of him quickly, the Commander is
impersonated by Nancy's fiance, Gerry Buss. As they try to hide Petrovyan,
the trumped-up stories and assumed identities mushroom hilariously, while agents
from the Russian embassy lurk outside in the bushes and the local constable
blunders in at the wrong time. Nancy and her
fiancé get involved in a hilarious game of hide and
seek in which everybody is pretending to be everybody else. This play is a
riot from beginning to end and was a huge West End hit for Ray Cooney and Brian Rix's Whitehall Theatre.
Auditions
Auditions were held on
Wednesday 27 July at 7:30pm. They were not in the
Green Room: one had to make one's way to the Community Room at the
Meander Village mobile home park, 18 Boyce Avenue, WYONG. For further
info, Millie can be contacted on 02-4353-9049 (not too late, please).
Early rehearsals were also held here.
(Click on the smaller map to
see a larger map)
Cast:
(7 Men, 3 Women as written)
Auditions were held on
Wednesday 27 July at 7:30pm. They were not in the
Green Room: one had to make one's way to the Community Room at the
Meander Village mobile home park, 18 Boyce Avenue, WYONG. For further
info, Millie can be contacted on 02-4353-9049 (not too late, please).
Early rehearsals were also held here.
