Writer/Lyricist: Harvey Badger
Composer: Amal El-Sawad
Director: Marianne McNamara
Here was Mikron in their natural habitat, a grassed area in an allotment with passers-by passing by and gardeners gardening. A simple structure sufficed for the set, with props hanging off it and a half-door at the back for sudden entrances. Musical instruments were handily placed and the Mikron van, replete with merchandise, stood watch as the four actor/musicians sold raffle tickets and programmes. (Actors on a Mikron tour need to work hard, with such extra duties in addition to playing maybe five parts and three musical instruments!).
Operation Beach Hut works on the familiar principle. There is a fictional story set in the present. Holly (Catherine Warnock), at Fiddling on Sea because of her grandma’s transfer to a nursing home, takes over her beach hut in time for the annual beach hut competition. She meets up with Sandy (Georgina Liley), the local museum curator and chief stirrer of opposition to Desmond Brough (James McLean) whose plan to cover the front in concrete and modernise the town has every hope of success, given the council’s plan to sell the beach huts. Robert Took, also Sandy’s artistic son, experiences a Damascene conversion to the cause as the newly redundant council official.
As you might expect, Desmond, despite having one or two arguments on his side, ultimately reveals himself for the crook that he is and is carted off by a convenient bobby, but the story is interrupted by many different strands, both factual and fanciful. There are snapshots of the seaside’s past (mods and rockers and so on) presented light-heartedly. There are appealing flashbacks to when granny was in her trouble-making prime (Warnock distinguishing the child from the adult very neatly). Best of all, Liley, McLean and Took introduce the show and make their presence felt intermittently as three sandwich-stealing seagulls.
Perhaps Harvey Badger, in his Mikron debut as playwright, tries to cram in too much by way of information and extraneous characters and Marianne McNamara’s inventive production has to keep the actors constantly on their toes for the next costume change or instrument grab, but this doesn’t diminish the good-humoured appeal of the show.
The songs show an unusual variety, with Empty Shells, for example, really affecting after the gentle rudery of The Great Leveller, and, needless to say, all four actors switch hats, characters and instruments with cheerful abandon and great skill.
Reviewed on 18th May 2025, and touring until October.
