My Friend Miss Flint
Tea Tree Players Theatre
Reviewed by Allison Thomas
Tea Tree Players usually put on a good comedy show, so I was expecting lots of laughs from “My Friend Miss Flint”. Perhaps it’s the script – there were quite a few good punch lines and the audience laughed at them, but, to me, there were a lot of slow parts. Also it could be because the play is about tax avoidance, deception and confusion!
I thought that the funniest actor was Timothy Cousins as Albert, the “handyperson”, although at times he was a bit distracting when he was “drunk” and took away the attention from the main action. However he made a convincing, engaging fraudulent character.
Chanelle Le Roux, as Lucy, had the best Cockney accent, showing up the other characters, who didn’t seem to have any English accents that I could pick.
David Kinna played the confused bumbling victim Tom, giving a good performance of different emotions as the world collapsed around him.
Sophie Gardner acted well as his manipulating, conniving, deceptive ex-wife and accountant Sarah and was cool calm and collected as she delivered more and more bad news for Tom and showed us her dark cunning calculating side.
And I hated Mr Dodds for his officious, bureaucratic Tax Inspector character with his inquisitive, interrogating questions – well done Nick Manning Bennett!
As usual, the scenic art by Damon Hill was wonderful – especially the “Picasso”. Mike Phillips’s lighting was good, with scene changes in near darkness accomplished smoothly.
The patrons at Tea Tree Players’ booked-out theatre enjoyed a great evening’s entertainment.
