That is the name of the play by David MGillivary and Walter Zerlin jnr, running only until the end of the week at the Abbey Theatre Club, but it is utterly hilarious.

It marked, for instance, the first time I have seen Lady Macbeth played - utterly hilariously - by Oor Wullie.

The principal characters are portrayed by members of the Abbey Theatre Youth Group, with assistance from some of the seniors.

The set-up is as follows. The Society is staging Macbeth in a drama competition. They are really bad. And it takes skill to portray something that is really bad and make it funny. The cast and producers have that skill, and it was hilarious.

There is a little piano music to start with. Think Les Dawson. We have a narrator, who eventually manages to introduce the judge of the contest, even if she never manages to get his name right. He plays his role in costume not a million miles away from the late George Melly.
We stumble through the play, overcoming little details like the scenery facing the wrong way, one performer with laryngitis and another who has to use a crutch.

The actress who is playing Lady Macbeth has got lost, and a (very!) young male member of the company is persuaded to stand in. His natural comic talent had the audience in stitches. The part where Lady Macbeth, the nurse and doctor got into a loop of dialogue because nobody could remember the line to get out of it will stay with me for a long time.



One short-sighted character's specs fall off and are lost – that is milked throughout the play. Sound effects are heard late, early or entirely wrong. For example, I don't think battery-powered ding-dong doorbells were around in Macbeth's time. I could be wrong.

Banquo's ghost appears in a supermarket trolley, with a dodgy wheel.
The witches dance, at one point to 'That Old Black Magic'. There is some really serious cackling, particularly from one who can put on a voice that would have cut through girders.

Everything the Farndale ladies do passes through a corridor of disaster before emerging, bloody, bruised and entirely unnoticed by the cast.
It was a hilarious, deliberately undisciplined romp, which producers Marlene Kear, Mark Masson and Anne Smith kept going at a cracking pace
The audience loved it. I loved it. And I'm pretty sure the cast was having a great time, too.

I've deliberately refrained from naming the real cast so far, because there are so many people playing so many parts I might get somebody wrong, and that would not do.

So the performers, in the order of the programme, are Mark Masson, Frank Gilbert, Becki Irvine, Hannah Irvine, Steven Spink (Lady Macbeth), Sara Anne Masson, Siobhan Dear, Leigh Howard, Terri-Marie Baker, Emily Barnes, Lauren McNaught and Steven Gilbert.

The real-life production team comprised: stage manger, Linda Patterson assisted by Judith Sanderson and Hugh Smith; set construction Dave Ferguson, Ian Anderson, Bob Sawley, Sandy Wallace, John Scott, Bob Johnston and Jim Jamieson; painters were Caroline Pennant-Jones, Roz Armstrong, Dorothy Parfitt and Lorraine McCouaig. Lighting and sound was by Stephen and Frank Gilbert; prompt, Pat McInroy; special props, Jean Henderson and Hugh Smith; front of house, Bob Sawley, and catering, Shona Gibb and theatre members.

The production was sponsored by Mackays, James Chalmers Road, Arbroath.

G.W.C.