"Where's My Brolly"
Clarendon College

How many ways can you think of to utilise an umbrella? Well once your mind starts to wander, the sky's the limit, especially in the mind of Chris Mercer. This is Chris's final play as part of his degree course at Clarendon and includes four females in the performance.

The stage is set with a massive fishing umbrella on the floor with a vast array of multi sized and multi coloured umbrellas dangling from the roof. Slowly from beneath the big umbrella, like a plant putting out roots, several other umbrellas emerge and open. This builds into the first of many scenes with the theme on umbrellas.

There are themes based upon Shakespeare, James Bond, Star Wars, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Hitchcock's "Psycho", The Charleston and song and dance, Origami and a sketch that reminded me of a comedy piece called "Rhubarb" where the only word uttered was "Rhubarb"; in this sketch, only the word "umbrella" was used which also incorporated a well known Scottish song and a Bee Gees classic.

As you can tell this performance is quite off the wall but very entertaining. Aside from the above there was also some lovely poetic moments with splashes of contemporary dance and some nice shadow effects

So if you like a varied amount of umbrellas, from cocktail brollies through parasols to automatic brollies, then this is the one for you.

There is one more chance to catch this clever and comical performance at Clarendon College, tomorrow - Friday - at 1.30pm.