Once again all of us at Adel Players are very grateful for the support of so many our patrons which helped to make our latest production such a success. Over 500 of you came to see the show and the feedback we have had has been extremely gratifying, the following being typical:

"Wow.  That was some performance last night.  One of my friends rang this morning and said the staging could have been at the West End.  It was superb and very detailed.  The acting was outstanding and the plot kept us mesmerised. The Dial M for Murder film has always been one of eeriest, spine-tingling I've seen and this script was in the same league.  Adel Players really did so well with all the complexities of producing this.  Very well done to everyone involved.  We were all very impressed."

"A really outstanding production, superbly produced, directed and acted by everyone as usual, but especially so by Laura Romanowski. So thank you very much for another great evening".

Please see below for production stills along with reviews as we receive them. 

Our thanks to Jenny Jones for taking the trouble to provide this review of the production:

Set in 1966 London, with no modern technology, short phone numbers using a phone with a dial, and £1 notes to do the shopping, we were immediately transported back in time. Take a combination of a blind woman, three criminals, a doll stuffed with heroin, and a geeky teenage neighbour, and you have the recipe for a life-threatening game of cat and mouse. A difficult play to act in when the main subject doesn’t make eye contact, but it was beautifully performed and directed, another Adel Players triumph. 

Sam and Susy Henderson, played by Bardia Ahmadi and Laura Romanowski, live in a basement flat in Notting Hill Gate. Recently married after a whirlwind romance, shortly after Susy lost her sight in an accident, they are young and in love. Sam is an up and coming photographer with a studio quite close by. He is trying to persuade Susy to be more independent, but Susy relies on Gloria from the flat above for help. She’s a teenage girl who likes to play tricks on Susy but, as the play moves on, she proves to be Susy’s biggest ally. 

After a flight home from Amsterdam Sam returns with a musical doll he’s been asked to carry back by a mysterious woman. He’s unaware that three ruthless criminals are trying to take it from her for the large amount of heroin the woman has stuffed inside it. Sam goes off twice to take photographs of clients, but no-one turns up as both are invitations designed to get him out of the way so the criminals can con their way into the flat to retrieve the doll when Susy is there alone. Add to this scenario the body of the woman who the criminals dump nearby in a rolled-up rug and the tension builds as, disguised as police, they suggest that Sam had been having an affair with this woman and may have murdered her. 

The set was cleverly designed with a short staircase to the front door, and a small area there where the criminals would stand so as not to be observed, but they hadn’t accounted for Susy’s heightened senses, especially her hearing, since becoming blind. Two Venetian blinds high in the wall were used to flash signals to the criminals waiting in their Dormobile parked next to a phone box (remember, its 1966) so they can ring Susy, posing as police. They start searching the flat determined to find the doll but it’s obvious that it isn’t there and Susy keeps her cool to protect Sam, insisting she doesn’t know the doll’s whereabouts. 

The criminals were constantly in and out of the flat, one pretending to be different people, all to add to Susy’s confusion. Beautifully acted, a chase scene was performed when Susy took out the fuses, so the criminals were in the dark and unlike her were at a disadvantage. Lots of tension built up as Susy began to get the upper hand; she realised that the policemen were fakes and she could sense when there was more than one person in the room with her. In the 

meantime, the young neighbour, Gloria, revealed that she has the doll. She confessed that she had stolen it but then had felt guilty and returned it, so Susy stuffed it into the washing machine to hide it from the last and most dangerous of the criminals, who by now had killed the other two. A frantic chase ensued round the flat with Susy lunging at him with a kitchen knife in the dark, as the whole audience held its collective breath. In the final scene Sam returned together with Gloria and the real police. Gloria’s comment? “I wish something as exciting as this happened every day!”

~ ~ ~ Jenny Jones