Don’t Shoot the Messenger! Mikron Theatre, Huddersfield

Mikron Theatre is celebrating its 42nd year. Based in Marsden, near Huddersfield, the theatre tours on a narrowboat in the summer and by road in the autumn.The company has performed in every kind of venue from pubs and village halls to the inside of a tunnel. Their reputation is built upon well written scripts, original music and songs and a highly skilled cast who act, sing and play musical instruments.

The latest production, Don’t Shoot the Messenger!, is the history of the postal service, all 500 years in 90 minutes! The setting is a post office in a sleepy town and as the owners (the Pertwees) are getting to grips with new technology, a gun toting hoodlum invades their life. But they are quick to disarm and disable him and he is forced to listen to their take on Post Office history.

Through a medley of songs and monologues, we are quickly made part of the show with community singing, while a clipboard on which to write  a letter is passed throughout the audience, who become an essential part of the history lesson. And it turns out the young man is not all he seems…

Mikron provides a unique night out, one of the few theatre groups that seek both to educate and entertain. They chose the postal service as a celebration of a public service, “a homage, an elegy, a love letter if you like to an institution on the brink of extinction”.

They are performing Don’t Shoot the Messenger! across the North West and nationwide.

Review by Bernadette Hyland

What: Don’t Shoot the Messenger!

Where: Mikron Theatre, Huddersfield

When: Touring until October 31, 2013

More info: www.mikron.org.uk