Aching feet and heaving bosoms - all in a good cause

Grown women, aching feet and heaving bosoms are all part of the promise as the Rustington Players stage Cheshire Cats by Gail Young.
The Rustington Players stage Cheshire Cats by Gail YoungThe Rustington Players stage Cheshire Cats by Gail Young
The Rustington Players stage Cheshire Cats by Gail Young

Vinny Shepherd will direct the show from Wednesday to Saturday, March 11-14 at 7.45pm at the Woodlands Centre, Rustington, BN16 3HB – a chance to follow the Cheshire Cats team on their emotional journey as they walk their way to fundraising success for Cancer Research through a London Moonwalk.

Taken from the author’s own experience, Cheshire Cats is a cross between a girls’ night out and a serious mission to support a worthy cause close to many hearts. Along the way, it mixes plenty of laughs with a few tears in a genuinely touching and poignant comedy. Hilary (Nadya Henwood) Siobhan (Claire Mitchell) Yvonne (Laura Thornett) Vicky (Gail Pichaeli) and Maggie (Sarah Johnson) are attempting to hike 13 miles across the capital. They are outrageously dressed as cats; each one of them has a personal reason for taking part and a story to tell.

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“Gail Young only started writing in 2005,” Vinny says, “and that was as a result of doing a Moonwalk. On the walk she had amusing and touching experiences, and she started writing. She took it to the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 and it sold out. Since then, I gather, she has written two or three more pieces that are usually themed on women’s issues. This one is obviously about breast cancer.

“I was recommended the play. I was looking for a couple of ideas to put forward to Rustington, and a friend of mine, who is also in the theatre, recommended I read it. I submitted it plus a couple of other ones, and this was the one they chose.”

Vinny was delighted that they did so: “I always like to do things that I have never done before. It is really quite a touching piece. It is all wrapped up in fun, but each of them has a poem that tells the audience why they are walking, Gail Young’s poems for each character. She gives them each an individual story.

“They are a group of friends of varying ages, and they have come together to do the walk. One of them drops out and so a rogue boy comes in. It is the five girls plus the boy. He is the love interest of one of the girls. Her friend drops out and so she recruits her boyfriend…”

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And they chat. Mostly about sex, actually: “They don’t talk much about cancer, which makes it easier for the audience which is then brought up short by the poems that they speak. But mostly they are talking about sex really!

“The challenge for us, and I am not sure we can overcome it, is that there are thousands of people doing the moonwalk, and it is a challenge for the audience too.

“We hope that they will imagine all the other people and not just the six people we have got on the stage. They push into imaginary people and they use the audience a little bit. They talk to the audience as if they were other walkers.

“Another reasons I liked the play was because it reminded me of Calendar Girls in that it is a serious subject, lightly delivered. Everyone knows someone affected by cancer so I think the audience will identify very quickly with both the story and the characters.”

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Vinny has been with the Rustington Players for three years: “We moved to the area, and I wanted to get back into amdram, so I went to see one of their shows, Habeas Corpus, and it was really good.”

As for directing, it means not having to learn lines, Vinny jokes: “But I just really enjoy the team work and the camaraderie of doing the direction. I do really love their input – as long as I have the last word, which is the only way it can work. But they are working so well as a team that it is very obvious what needs to be done,”

Tickets £10 on Ticketsource.co.uk/rustingtonplayers; 0754 6306438; on the door.

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