Fiftieth birthday celebrations - an appeal.
  As mentioned in the last issue of Lookaround, the People's Hall will be celebrating its fiftieth birthday in the autumn and plans are in hand for this. Readers will be kept informed of these.
  What are needed now, please, are memories and photographs of the Hall over the years and of events that have taken place there.
  Please, also, let us know if you were on the committee or know or remember anyone who was.
  In addition, help is needed to trace the minutes for the years 1970-1986, which are missing from the series in the archives. If anyone knows the whereabouts of these, please let us know.
  If you can help in any way please contact Sedbergh Office Services, any member of the Committee, or leave a message on 015396 20677. We should be very grateful.

  A reminder to all that the Tennis season is now underway.  Club nights are Tuesdays from 7 pm.
  Come along and have a game.  For information or enquiries ring Graham Robinson on 015396-21014.
  A Family Fun Day is planned for Sunday 18th June with a 2 pm start.  Teams will comprise and adult partnering a child.
  There is a Barbeque to conclude the afternoon.

  Under Susan Garnett, Sedbergh and Dent are having a renaissance of ambitious, entertaining, well-directed theatre. Her run of Dent-based productions has done much to illuminate the local scene. Staging a traditional prosc-arch show like Oscar Wilde's 'Lord Arthur Saville's Crime' in the round takes real concentration and firm discipline by the entire team. Wilde is not much into serious onstage hi-jinx - so this isn't standard farce - so if everybody sits, the audience get backs, and if they all stand, it looks like the January sales in an auction warehouse. This production was pretty sure-footed, though there were odd occasions when Graham Dalton looked uncannily like a predatory heron on a river bank seeking whom he may devour! 
  Susan Garnett is blessed by having a strong central quintet who play against and off each other with uncanny empathy - Ian Dawson, Graham Dalton, Robin Hildrew, Sally Blackburn and the wonderful Elizabeth Dalton. Graham Dalton's Baines was surely among the best things seen locally for years. Manner, subtle shifts of voice, ideal deportment, life-saving yet majestic presence were utterly authentic, done with style and a fine-tuned but understated comic timing, yet had the intelligence to show the burgeoning, romantic below-stairs affair of the heart in a nicely observed sub-plot with Caroline Lamb's demure, but secretly ardent maid. I have never seen Ian Dawson so disciplined, and his skilful use of the space, acting with the back and command of the telling pause and eye contact with audience are all critical, and done with aplomb. The temptation is to play Arthur as Bertie Wooster, but Ian Dawson played it straight - result? No mugging and milking, but high-tempo movement, exquisite timing, keeping the often complex and surreal plot lines in play, and never taking the foot off the gas. He and Baines must keep pressing on without appearing to do so, and that is precisely what they did. They are a well-honed and luminary duo.
  Wilde specialises in chaperones and aunts who'd give the SAS a fright and in the presence of Sally Blackburn's steely, acerbic, no-nonsense Lady Julia, you knew that Arthur was in for a devilishly tricky time avoiding beady eyes and whiplash tongue. Quieter but equally deadly was Libby Hartley's Lady Windermere, whose baleful eyes followed Arthur everywhere, with a crushing, well-judged line in throwaway delivery. Elizabeth Dalton's 'mature' good time girl parasiting off great-nephew with bare-faced cheek and breath-taking regularity was surprisingly a very sympathetic character, thus making Baines' and Arthur's attempts to bump her off to fulfil the prophesy and shift the burden of her crippling gambling debts both hilarious yet having a certain rough justice.. Three expertly gloved and suited Witches that would grace the Scottish play! Jenny Robinson's Sybil came on with spoilt brat tears, but every so often, the eyes would narrow, and she would suddenly show that one day she too would be a mighty force in this monstrous regiment. Does Arthur really know what he is getting into? Another innocent for bumping off was Robin Hildrew's beautifully observed and irascible Dean of Paddington -weddings and funerals tend to merge in the Paddington brain in a blur, and Wilde uses him cleverly to accelerate some of the best comic business - a delight to see him not played as a doddery loony for a change. Mike Duxbury's bluff, and wide-eyed charlatan Podgers was a nice little piece of work, but I think I would have been tempted to make Podgers a touch more sinister and sleazier, an obvious second hand car salesman gulling these upper class twits - Wilde was having a swipe at the Madame Blavatsky-type shysters the aristocracy seemed to have taken a shine to, rather like Nancy Regan and her astrologer.  Winkelkopf must be a sublime botcher and caricature rent-a-bomber. Jim Kirton certainly had the voice and clothes for it, but maybe his scenes need to be a bit pacier to maintain the comic pressure. Playing comedy like this is rather like crossing a stream with very thin ice - move fast and it's fun, slow down and the ice cracks under you.
  Wilde's wicked in-joke references to his other plays were delivered with relish - Lady Windermere and Hastings getting cunningly located for the theatre buffs. The lighting team had done a very good job in lighting the central space so evenly  - no mean feat with actors both standing and seated in such a confined area in a hall not built for the format- and special effects generally worked with split second timing! Many thanks and congratulations to Susan Garnett and her wardrobe and make-up teams for a great night out. An exceptionally jolly, and very well patronised evening to launch the Sedbergh and Dent Festival season.                                                                                                                                                                  Stuart Manger