24/11/18: Some of My Best Friends Are Women, Finchley Methodist Church Hall

The latest show by the Guild Players had a lot to live up to after the stunning Widdershins. Written by Carole Tricker, this is a comedy about five women at a book group. It starts gently enough, with each of the characters revealing aspects of their lives, loves and personalities, and progresses into farce via a daft off-stage narrative about one of them drinking too much, briefly going AWOL and hitting a man with an umbrella.

The actresses bravely did their best with the material, but the play itself could have been far stronger. It really needed some sparkling dialogue and/or thematic weight to offset the lack of actual drama. It appeared to shy away from making sharper points about friendship, gender politics and suburban niceties with the result that it didn’t seem to have a huge amount to communicate. It was left to the creative cast to mine the dialogue for laughs, which they did successfully.