Charlie’s Aunt

By Brandon Thomas, directed by Bob Gooding

Frome Festival, 3rd – 9th July 2010

The world famous millionairess, Donna Lucia d’Avadorez from Brazil (“where the nuts come from”!), is still going strong after a hundred years of hilarious farce and was be the guest of Frome Drama Club during the Frome Festival. Val Atkinson took on the role of the real celebrity aunt but it was stalwart veteran Alan Burgess who had to impersonate her. Dressed like a taller version of Queen Victoria, he has to chaperone two girls when they visit their student boyfriends, Jack and Charley, at their Oxford college.

Slippery solicitor, Stephen Spettigue, and retired impecunious colonel, Sir Francis Chesney propose to the imposter. Both men, of course, just wanted to get their hands on the money of Charley’s aunt who, with his trousers firmly buttoned beneath his black skirts, reminded them that he is no ordinary woman! When the real Donna Lucia appears the pace got fast, furious, frantic and funnier by the minute but all was revealed by the end!