It’s a hen party, but not as you know it. Comic horror show Hen Night Horror packs a punch which delights its target audience with gusto. There is little doubt that the story of Amanda McNamee in her Highland Getaway, paid for by one of the bridesmaids, hits all the key notes when performing in front of their people. It is a sure fire hit.
And so, as the story goes, Amanda (Kim Shepherd) has arrived with Donna Nesbitt (Frances Thorburn) and Lydia Moonie (Louise McCarthy) as bridesmaids in tow. The veil of friendship is often strained, not least when each bridesmaid gets the actual chance to actually peep at the other; and they actually did, by the way. Donna’s secret as to how she can afford this Highland retreat wedding gift is eventually revealed prior to what they think is the murder of a certain Mr. Jeffries (Alan Orr) before they meet a real threat in an unreal policeman, PC Walters (Matthew Mckenna). It leads to the complexities of a dominatrix, an escape from Carstairs and the worst hen night in anyone’s existence.
Hen Night Horror has no pretentions: it knows what it is. In a venue where critics were actively discouraged, if not banned from attending due to the prickly presence of one Iain Gordon, it was great to be back in a venue I don’t think I have been in for decades. The takeover by Trafalgar has recognised that what Gordon did was to create a theatre filled with variety to survive. And survive it has. There is a core audience whom you treat with contempt at your peril, and they know what they like—and they loved this.
Hen Night Horror is not going to see Methuen and Nick Hern arguing over a book deal for the script, but nobody in the audience gave that any heed. They laughed uproariously. They applauded enthusiastically. They enjoyed every minute of it. Yes, it is crude and lacks subtlety, but it has a couple of things really going for it.
The first is a cast who can really sing. They do far more than carry a tune. The songs are banging, and they manage to vogue more than once, sashay more than twice and do sassy song numbers better than most. It’s glorious. Sure, the lyrics carry the crudity into their vocal range, unapologetically, and perhaps they may never get an airing at a school disco, but the people at the Pavilion bloody loved it.
The second is the cast. They know how to heighten effects, act off-script and then deliver with a knockout look, nod, hint and grimace. All of them do. Shepherd’s Amanda, the bride being tortured and eventually the worse for wear, scales it up as time progresses rather than playing the drunk from the beginning. There is the poised grace and hint of trouble from Thorburn’s Donna hiding something whilst giving as good as she gets, especially in the musical numbers. Orr’s Mr. Jeffries does a star turn in the BDSM scenes as he plays with ill-disguised joy over the abuse he hopes to get.
And then in the second half in comes McKenna’s PC Walters. Having hung about outside in the first half as the threatening presence in the woods, he arrives to heighten and provide the horror. Unfortunately for him, he loses more than he bargained for, but between the Doric doughball and then the menacing maniac, he takes centre stage with the moves and the lyrical licks. But if there is one face that contorts more than anyone’s, it is McCarthy’s Lydia. In the tradition of many in the past who have graced that particular stage, she has mastered the art of delivery. The fact is, given the cast’s work on The Dolls and impressive musical theatre experience, this is a perfect writing and performing combination augmented by track records.
But it has to be well directed and choreographed. Here both are on-point. Space is given to the actors to find their relationship with the audience, almost testing the material with the crowd to see what they can get away with and then launching into the most outrageous they can be. At the beginning, there were a few missteps in delivery as that relationship had not quite settled down, which may have been the actor’s desire they have to perform a show many years in the making. Production values are slick and give the piece an air of care and attention—it is precisely what a Pavilion audience will look for. They may applaud gusto and guts, but they can see turkeys out of Christmas and deal with them as if it is the festive period in their responses. This is no turkey, this can really fly.
It is easy to be sniffy about shows like Hen Night Horror as they get categorised as bawdy, crude and common. People who want a gourmet theatrical meal can be very sniffy, but this was a theatre filled by people out for a good time and were in a theatre watching actors onstage earning a crust. It may not be to everyone’s tastes, but when people rose at the end to applaud, they did so with genuine affection for the characters, the event and the theatre. In a theatre. If Hen Night Horror had been a stinker, they would have applauded, muttered, left and not returned. That’s the thing about variety: it needs to be good to last. And here is the evidence we have it good.
And, if the hen night was so bad, one wonders what the wedding turned into, if the divorce was on the horizon, or which one was the next to give birth. A dynasty with horror may have been born…