Making a welcome return visit to Oldham this evening was Midlands-based company Next Page Productions. In an evening of two seperate halves, the first hour or so was given over to Steve Dimmer (who quite wonderfully portrayed Sid James last year in a one-man play about his life) who gave a talk about another great comedy icon who, sadly, is now no longer with us; Victoria Wood.
The presentation used much archive video footage and photographs all displayed on a screen above the stage. Dimmer's voice was clear and precise, but sadly sometimes the sound from the video was less than perfect and often out of sync.
For those who don't know anything about Victoria Wood, then this talk would have been a very nice and gentle introduction to her life and her body of work. Born in Prestwich, part of Bury, Greater Manchester, she is, quite naturally both quite well known and loved around here. From a talented but troubled childhood, leading to a very insular and stressful time at Bury Grammar School, she found relief and release when joining Rochdale Youth Theatre. Her auditioning for a theatre course at Manchester university, meant a chance meeting with Julie Walters which was to develop into a life-long friendship.
Fame didn't come immediately; in fact she spent much of her ealy career writing scripts rather than performing them; but in the end her love of comedy songs - something she inherited from her father, who used to compose them himself; and her rich and unequalled talent at championing the underdog in a very comedic way, is something we will always remember her for. A true Northern lass, something that both her writing and performing would never belittle, is being commemorated by the erecting of a statue of her in Bury centre soon.
The talk was short on detail and simply skimmed through her life touching barely the surface at times. For me, far too much focus and time was given to us actually watching sections of her performances, as we were shown two of her comedy ballads in full, a whole episode of Acorn Antiques and very long clips of Dinner Ladies, and vaious others. I think far less emphasis on the reliance of footage, and far more detail in the presentation would have been far more interesting. We learnt nothing that we either didn't already know or isn't easily available on the first page of any web search about her.
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 9/7/19
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