The Passing of the Third Floor Back

by Jerome K Jerome / Performed by Rep College, 21 South Street, June 9

FORGET water into wine, this play is about turning vinegar into syrup.
  The lodgers at Mrs Sharpe's Guest House are petty, selfish, irascible and pretentious. That's when the milk is only half watered down. At other times they are lying, cheating and despising.
  With epithets and encouragement to introspection, the new placid occupant of the third floor back room transformd the sour minds and acetic tongues into nice people. It's a play where the message is the plot, is the lot.
  Not for the cast, each of whom finds some traits of a person in their thinly drawn, symbolic characters. Restrained mannerism, reaction and repeated movements along with a variety of vocal phrasing adds a wash of realism.
  Thos with the biggest empty vases to fill do so without over-flowing into caricature: Yvie Magee as the sour, mean landlady of more substance than a Peggy Mount; Hayley Gilbert, the cockney maid, soundly two bells short of an Elisa Doolittle; Gareth David Lloyd as the businessman denying his birth race; and Alicia Stephens covering her age with creams and cosmetics.
  The performances are epitomised in the way Kingsley Glover plays the new fellow lodger, a mule ride between the pious and the plasticine. The temptation to flash cynicism into his lines is forborne.
  Temperence from over-acting and supportive ensemble work save the soul of this proselyting piece.

William Campbell

21 South Street, Reading

WITH a cast of 12, this play, albeit somewhat dated, was an ideal vehicle for both established and new members of The Rep College.
  An unnamed, elderly, charismatic gentlemen (Kingsley Glover) enters Mrs Sharpe's (Yvie Magee) down-at-heel boarding house and gently indicates to each of the embittered guests that the quality of their lives could be improved.
  The mystery is, who is the stranger and where does he go once his task has been accomplished?
  Newcomers Marie Gibson (Mrs Tomkins) and Dai Spencer (a penniless painter) were quite at home in the company of the other more experienced players, who included Gareth David Lloyds as city merchant Jape Samuel, and Hayley Gilbert as a common, loud-mouthed servant.
  In his first performance with the Rep College, Robin March impressed as Samuel's sidekick Harry Larcom.

Barrie Theobold