Hot Taps by Donald Macdonald

This was the April 1999 production, directed by (myself) Peter Deane.  Since I had done Caravan by Donald Mcdonald a few years earlier with the Central Coast Theatre Company at Ourimbah, I was keen to get my teeth into another play by Donald Mcdonald.  As an Australian author of comedy, Donald is a prime example.  His character observations are spot on, and he can capture the salient points of character and exemplify these features in an extremely funny manner.

The play provided an excellent vehicle for the actors to shine in their roles.  This was taken advantage of mostly by Marc Calwell, Fiona Summerell and Kath Izzard.  Kath shocked us all with her talents in actually being her role to a tee.  Pam Campbell made her usual strong contribution to WDG by playing the mother.  The play provided the young Sara Brown with her debut for Wyong Drama Group; added yet another notch to Carl Martin's belt; and allowed WDG director Ron Baker the chance to see what it's like from the actor's point of view. 

The set was a lot of fun to design and build, given that the entire stage was one enormous (and very expensive) bathroom, complete with a sauna, showerbath and (offstage) toilet.  The shower had running water, although the sauna was not actually functional!  (Mind you, under stage lighting, the entire backstage area at the hall is like a sauna anyway).

The set provided a couple of interesting anecdotes. At one point during the construction of the set, I jumped off the window sill centre-right on to the raised platform section, and continued to fall right through the elevated floor to the real floor of the stage.  When I replaced this section I used particle-board flooring rather than the pyneboard which hadn't handled my weight.

Another mishap occurred during a performance when the sauna doorknob ceased to function from the outside. This meant poor old Milly had to make her exit through the main bathroom door and then had to return via the sauna.  Our audiences were not to know the sauna didn't have a back door as well as a main entrance!! (Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it).  During this performance, I can remember spending the rest of the first half of the play actually IN the sauna (albeit out of the audience's sight) opening and closing the door from inside for each and every entrance/exit.  The door knob's internal mechanism had simply become dislodged, and I repaired it at interval in about three minutes.

Enough reminiscences, here are some actual resources from the show:

Hot Taps Programme          (505,075 bytes)

Hot Taps Poster                 (384,329 bytes)

Hot Taps Press Clippings     (368,132 bytes)

Hot Taps Set Design            (73,616 bytes)

Full-Sized Picture Above       (76,904 bytes)

Casting Notes

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Copyright © May-11 by Peter Deane   -  Last modified: Monday, 18 July 2011 02:47 AM