Levin Little Theatre stages a clever rollercoaster of a show

Levin Little Theatre has pushed the boat out with their latest offering Uproar in the House, which started with shows at the weekend.

Directed by Sonya Finlayson, the story centres around Bernard Lockwood (Les Frost) and a big house he built. He gets another man in, Nigel Pitt (Mike Pyefinch), to help him sell the house under the pretence of being the owner.

One lie turns into another lie, and that lie creates more lies, and therein lies the beauty of the plot of the play, a clever rollercoaster of unravelling surprises.

Matters are complicated as Pitt, also a fledgling politician, is paired with an actress in Melanie Sinclair (Maria Jenkins) to make the ruse more authentic.

Cue a fog storm, and would-be buyers Sir Lindsay (Jeremy Skerman) and Lady Cooper (Chontelle Van Hagen) are forced to stay the night, and even their relationship turns out to be not all it seems either.

Thrown into the mix are Andrew Grey (Dave Key) and Audrey Grey (Letitia Moore) who have some secrets of their own, most of which are caught on camera by a sneaky photographer (Declan Leahy).

Reon Materman does a god job of playing both the clumsy plumber Cyril Allcock and the pompous David Prosser.

Mix in the slightly crazy Monica Johnson (Polly Pyefinch) and Yvonne Wilby (Kim Stevenson), and the cast do a good job of keeping alive an intricate story line with more twist and turns than a two-minute noodle.

Due to some great casting and committed performances, the characters in the play all come alive pretty quickly, including some ambitious accents which are pulled off.

Everybody has a happy ending, and it was another solid effort from a small community theatre that keeps punching above its weight.