New Apollo Theatre returns to The Wedgewood Rooms with golf comedy, Par For The Course by Peter Gordon

Following on from the success of its double-bill of comedies in November, New Apollo Theatre is staging Peter Gordon’s Par For The Course.

With more than 1,750 professional and amateur productions world-wide, Peter is one of the UK’s most popular playwrights.

The play takes place over Captain's Day at the Seven Lakes Golf Club, and things gets off to a bad start when the men's captain is indisposed.

Club secretary, Simon, relishes the chance to take over but is soon thwarted by the arrival of vice captain, Nick and his girlfriend, Tiffany. Lady captain, Fran, and enthusiastic but hopeless Barry add to the confusion as a series of disasters mount. With the unexpected arrival of Simon's wife, Laura, tensions build and things go from bad to worse.

It also marks the company’s return to The Wedgewood Rooms.

Director Steve Pitt says: ‘It's been a while, at least five years – it was Funeral Games by Joe Orton we last did there, so it's good to be back and The Wedge has had a bit of a facelift over the last couple of years.

‘(The Wedge’s manager) Geoff's thought about things specifically to be able to take in theatre if it comes his way – which is a real positive as far as we're concerned.

‘We've used the Square Tower a lot recently, but they're under a lot of pressure because of a backlog of weddings and they're trying to accommodate that, so it made sense for us to look elsewhere, and the automatic choice was The Wedge because we had a great time there before, and Geoff's welcomed us back with open arms.’

And it’s the first time the company has tackled any of Gordon’s works.

‘We had wanted to do another Alan Bennett, because we really enjoyed that, but the rights weren't available for what we wanted.

‘(Cast member) Becky James had directed this years ago with her other theatre company and she said it might be worth looking at this…

‘Because his plays are pretty easy to stage he's popular with theatre groups and he writes in quite a traditional way that's very accessible.

‘And he writes very economically, which is great because a lot of playwrights don't, which means you can get real pace into the production.

‘The interactions between the characters are really well drawn, so we're really enjoying rehearsing it and looking forward to putting it on.

‘If you remember that sitcom Outside Edge,’ the ’90s show set around a village cricket team, ‘it's a bit like that, but about golf instead.

‘It's got a bit of Carry on about it, a bit of sitcom, it's a great fun piece, and if you like golf you'll love it, if you hate golf you'll love it too – actually, you'll probably find it quite cathartic if you hate golf.’

The rest of the cast is packed with familiar faces, including Christopher Marlowe, Peter McCrohon (fresh from The Kings’ panto), Aaron Holdaway, Francesca McCrohon and Natalie Gunn.

‘It's a very good quality cast,’ says Steve.

‘Usually because everyone's so busy doing other pro work, I rarely get my first choice cast, but I did on this, and I'm absolutely delighted.

‘I've worked with them all multiple times – it makes it easier when you're directing because you know what you can get out of them, how they're going to react, what their skill set is, you can hear their voice in the character from the beginning, which is really important.

‘We are quite lucky that we've got such a strong pool to choose from, usually if I don't get my first choice, there's two or three other people who are all brilliant.

‘When you work with a pool of actors regularly, when you read a script for the first time, you hear certain voices, and I heard all of these characters' voices in my head with the cast I've ended up with, and that's really great.’

Par For The Course is at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea on February 20, 21, 23. For tickets, go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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