French Club Play —With. Chamber Pot!

The French Club's rendering of Jules Romains's "Knock" was a howling success; but not in quite the was cast or audience expected it to be.

The last act produced a gush of unintentional hilarity centred on forgotten lines and a chamber pot. In fact, in the course of the play so much seemed to go wrong that it was almost too good to be true. The action was saved from disintegration time and again by Murray Gronwall's Improvisations

Understanding the array of student accents seemed almost unnecessary. The succession of clownish characters spoke for themselves in their acting. Foremost among these was Knock himself (Murray Gronwall), at first a mysterious individual in dark glasses and floppy hat and later the suave trickster who convinces a whole town that it is ill.

Other notable characterisations came from Richard Barron (the town crier) who captured the heavy-footed simplicity of a French provincial townsman, Norman Cleland as the terrified "instituteur," and Linda Roddick as the old lady.

In short, the play was fractured in a most enjoyable manner. Kudos to the set designers also, who made bare yet effective scenes which allowed the players every opportunity to read their lines from the script (unknown, of course, to the audience.)

By George Quinn