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Theatre listings > Dirty Dusting. - Tour. Playwrights - Ed Waugh and Trevor Wood. Director - Russell Lane. Designer - John Chapman. Sound Designer - Tommy Gorman. Producers - Robert C Kelly (The noteable Glasgow-based producer) and Michael Harrison ( who is also Executive Producer for Qdos Entertainment). Cast - here . 2005 Tour Dates and Times - here . Seen to review at King's Theatre Edinburgh on 7 November 2005. Run Time - 2 hours including an interval. Reviewer - Thelma Good. Good if not clean fun. Janet Michael, Hope Ross and Carole Anders are Gladys, Elsie and Olive office cleaners who get a big shock one Friday night while at their job. The cleaning is being outscourced, the wages have become the minimum and only under 65s can apply due apparently to some EEC regulation. Trouble is, sprightly those three are as they banter away, they're all too long in the tooth for these changes. The trio go back a long way - Olive was once Elsie's and Glady's Guide Captain and she's still got a managing side to her. Divorcee Elsie and still married Gladys are close friends but none of them have had much fun recently, with husbands dying in the wrong type of cinema, only able to get it on when male Troy leaders win or more involved with pigeons. When one of them has a bright idea to get alternative earnings by giving men relief down the phone, they make arrangements and all three start waiting for the office phones to ring. Full of inuenndo and jokes, some of which you've certainly heard before but probably not so well delivered, these three comic actors more than satisfied the largely female audience on opening night. The blokes in the audience laughed almost as much, despite the fact many of the the jokes were at their sex's expense. Strangely this pair of male writers have underwritten the supervisor Dave leaving John Hannibal to be mostly just a butt for jokes in his occassional appearances. That flaw aside the script recognises the frustrations and oddities of peoples' lives, and delivers comic riffs that develop rather than a string of ultimately laughter flattening one-liners. The result is the audience warms itself up almost as soon as Dirty Dusting begins long before we get into the raunchy stuff and there are lots of extended times when the audience's laughter grows and grows. Comic delight Janet Michael adds another dotty woman with a heart to her repetoire and it's a tribute to the other two's talents that she doesn't totally steal the show. Trevor Wood and Ed Waugh's script first set people laughing a lot in NE England and this version has been translated into a Glasgow setting so well it feels totally Scottish. The well delivered humour is only slightly undermined by uninspired set and the rather too static direction in the second half. Overall it's a night of good if not clean fun. Go and expect to laugh a lot. © Thelma Good 7 November 2005 - Published on EdinburghGuide.com Cast - Gladys - Janet Michael, Elsie - Hope Ross, Olive - Carole Anders and Dave - John Hannibal. 2005 Autumn Tour Details of Robert C Kelly and Michael Harrison's production of Dirty Dusting. Tour begins. 7 - 12 Nov Mon to Thurs at 7:30pm Fri and Sats at 6pm & 8:30pm Edinburgh King's Theatre 0131 529 6000. 14 - 19 Nov Mon to Thurs at 7:30pm Fri & Sat at 6pm & 8:30pm Glasgow King's Theatre 0141 240 1111. Tour ends. Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is thelma@edinburghguide.com Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted for any errors or omissions. Theatre listings >
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