Banter at a canter in odds-on winner

LADIES’ DAY, Oldham Coliseum, to May 25
AMANDA Whittington’s plays often seem to set off at an enjoyable canter then go off the pace about the half way stage; it takes a strong director to keep them on course.

The analogy is more than appropriate for this play — a not-always-comic, fish-out-of-water story of fish factory girls and their glammed-up day at the races.

To celebrate her not-quite-retirement, Pearl (Annie Sawle — one of the two members of cast from the original Hull production in 2005, the other being Sue McCormick as Jan) is taking her work friends — dopey youngster Linda (Laura Aramayo) and desperate Shelley (Amy Walsh) to Royal Ascot, that year held in York.

After getting in by a stroke of not exactly legal luck, they have a bet on the races and if they all romp home, stand to win £500,000.

Along the way Tony Christie-fan Linda chats to a jockey, Shelley considers prostitution as a way out of her debts, Jan reveals her love for the soon-leaving factory foreman (played, like all the other male characters, by the hard working Tom Bevan) and Pearl reveals she’s been having a completely secret affair with a married man for several years.

You might think they can’t have much time left for the actual racing and you would be right: though we get a primer on tic-tac code and betting odds along the way.

But the race meeting is little more than a way to get them out of the factory and talking about more than filleting, and as such the device just about works — courtesy of solid direction from Gareth Tudor Price, who was in charge of the original Hull Truck production. Richard Foxton’s design is a handsome mix of factory floor and paddock, though there’s not much race meeting atmosphere, admittedly difficult with a cast of five.

Whittington maintains a fairly light, “banter” level of dialogue that never gets too heavy — even towards the end, when Pearl gets to meet her bookie lover for the last time.

But while the story is part wayward steed and part wish-fulfilment fantasy, show veterans McCormick and Sawle play it for real and are matched in enthusiasm by the two younger women.

The performance of the evening though comes from Tom Bevan, who makes each of the handful of characters he plays — bookie, TV host, jockey, fish factory foreman and so on, distinctive and real.