Dressing Gown

July 11, 2024

10th – 27th July 2024

Have you ever had one of those days when events conspire against you? When you are frustrated at every turn? When even the simplest conversations are misconstrued? Driven to distraction by incessant ringing on front door and phone? When, quite frankly, you should have stayed under the duvet?

Ash, theatre director Tom Asher, is having one such day. A day when, however hard he tries, the simple act of greeting the morning in something more formal than his dressing gown, is a deed too far.

We meet Ash (Jamie Hutchins) in his cluttered flat, littered with notes and scripts of the play, The Bearded Vulture, he is working on with paranoid producer and best friend Dan (Ryan Woodcock) .

He’s aroused from sleep by the arrival of business partner Dan. Tousled hair, silk paisley pattern dressing gown pulled hastily round his shoulders, Ash is no match to defend himself from the fiery invective that fully-dressed Dan spews at him.

This bedroom farce — although none of the action takes place in the bedroom — rapidly escalates into hilarity with four well-drawn characters vying for laughs.

“Dressing Gown is a ridiculous and hugely enjoyable comedy”

Ash has two simple aims: to prevent his personal and professional life tipping into catastrophe; and to get dressed. Easier said than done as he fends off a series of deranged callers who test his patience, his professionalism, his sanity.

First off is Dan, convinced Ash has betrayed him by bedding the leading lady, his girlfriend Layla. He is so incensed that he threatens to end their friendship and ditch the play.

Then there’s Jenna (Freya Alderson), the wonderfully ditzy blonde writer of The Bearded Vulture, who nurses an antipathy verging on hatred towards any actor who fails to respect the sanctity of her script.

‘They don’t care what I wrote. They make up shit and paraphrase. Don’t worry about the poor old playwright,’ she whimpers. She too threatens to pull the plug on the play.

She’s as colourfully bizarre as her shocking pink tights suggest – and a bit deaf thanks to very loud rock music.

Vanity prevents her from wearing her hearing aid – which accounts for her belief that Ash’s alcoholic brother will benefit from his career in the cavalry as horses are such great therapy. No, no, protests Ash, he’s in recovery not the cavalry.

Without plot spoiling it’s enough to say her reporting on misheard overheard conversation leads to Dan’s belief that Layla is being unfaithful with Ash. Dressing-gowned Ash protests his innocence.

Enter Layla, (Rosie Edwards) all leading lady glamour, style and insecurities. Her poise and polish vanish in that precious creative world of the luvvies.

More unwelcome news comes by phone as the leading man has an attack of the vapours and threatens to walk over some perceived slight. All frazzled Ash can do is flatter and grovel and plead. In his dressing gown.

The entire cast of The Bearded Vulture and its producer are at war as opening night hurtles towards distraught Ash. Tantrums and tempers, tensions and tears escalate, as does the laughter. How three of the Dressing Gown cast also end up in dressing gowns — who even owns three dressing gowns? — is anybody’s guess.

Writer Andrew Cartmel admits he has those days. ‘Before I know it’s past noon I’m still in my dressing gown, and feeling like a degenerate,’ he confesses. Frustration, he finds, is a powerful engine of comedy.

And Director Jenny Eastop reckons life at its heart is absurd. ‘The essence of farce is that the peril the protagonist is struggling with, which is life or death to them, is utterly ridiculous to anyone else,’ she says.

Dressing Gown is a ridiculous and hugely enjoyable comedy – with no audience member leaving the theatre over the Chiswick pub without a smile. We all know how hard it is, some days, just to get dressed.

One confession, dear theatre goer, I write this…still in my pyjamas.