Little Grimley Amateur Dramatic Society is in trouble. Membership has fallen to four, audiences are disappearing and there is the small matter of keeping the whole thing alive. Chairman Gordon decides there is only one reliable way to get people through the door: sex. What follows in Last Tango in Little Grimley is a gloriously desperate attempt to stage something daring enough to save the society. Then, having apparently learned absolutely nothing, Gordon, Margaret, Joyce and Bernard return in Last Panto in Little Grimley, where the same tiny company turns its attention to pantomime. It goes about as smoothly as you would expect.
All Saints Elton Theatre Company presented the two comedies on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th September, returning on Friday 30th September and Saturday 1st October 2022.
Written by David Tristram, the Little Grimley plays are affectionate send-ups of amateur theatre and all the things that can go wrong when enthusiasm is considerably larger than the cast, budget or audience.
Stuart Butt played Gordon, Little Grimley’s chairman and director. The four members of Little Grimley are determined to carry on regardless. Plans become increasingly ambitious, personalities clash and the business of simply putting on a show becomes a show in itself.
There is probably a reason these plays have remained so popular with amateur theatre companies. Anyone who has ever been involved with community theatre will recognise at least a little of Little Grimley. Hopefully not all of it. If you recognise all of it, we should probably have a quiet word.
Our 2022 production gave audiences two helpings of David Tristram’s backstage chaos and celebrated precisely the sort of determination that has kept amateur theatre alive for generations. Little Grimley might only have four members left, but they certainly make enough trouble for forty.