Teechers was written by John Godber in 1984, and like most of his plays, it is for a small cast and a minimal set. The actors playing the three main parts of students Gail, Hobby and Salty are performing a play within a play to their favourite teacher who, like them is leaving at the end of term. This play is ideal for the Star Inn’s intimate theatre space with the cast of three taking on multiple roles.
John Godber specified that contemporary chart music should be used to keep the play current, which is done successfully here. However, it still seems a little dated: the soon to be school leavers are referred to as 5th years which in today’s parlance would make them 10-year-olds still in Junior School! The set also includes a blackboard, remember those anyone?
Apart from these small details school seems just as it is today. The children still set out to test the nerve of new teachers ‘Our class got rid of three teachers in 3 weeks’ one of the children announces proudly, and they draw penises on every available surface whenever the teacher’s back is turned.
Gail, Hobby and Sam are not star students and only chose drama because they thought it would be a bit of a skive but Mr Nixon has brought out their talent for acting and for that they will never forget him. They portray all the stereotypes found in schools everywhere: The idealistic new teacher who wants to be the kid’s best friend and looks like he has come to mend the drains, the man-eating teacher who is a frustrated theatre director, the school bully, the hopeless teacher with no control over her class, the miserable caretaker who hates children, the fit PE teacher who everyone fancies. I certainly sympathised with the drama teacher being unable to get into the hall to rehearse because exams were on and not being able to go to the pub in the evening because it was full of six formers.
Lauren James Ray as Gail, Sam Stay as Salty and Elle Banstead-Salim as Hobby are all great, they may look slightly too old to be 16-year-olds but they have to play so many characters from 16 to 60 years old that these must be challenging roles to cast. What they do have is a boundless energy that keeps this play charging through to the end with hardly a pause for breath. Very funny, great fun, quite exhausting!
Review by Sally Knipe
Guildford Fringe Theatre Company are proud to be presenting John Godber’s classic comedy, Teechers.
Join Gail, Hobby and Salty, three fifth form students who, in the form of an end-of-term play, tell the hilarious story of an idealistic new teacher in his perilous first days inside a local comprehensive school.
Fast-moving and highly entertaining, Teechers evokes life at a modern school. The new drama teacher’s progress through two terms of rowdy classes, cynical colleagues and an obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillusioned, he departs for a safer private school.
Teechers by John Godber
19/09/2018 – 29/09/2018
https://www.guildfordfringe.com/
