'ADA & ELSIE' to Run 18 - 22 Feb at Capri Theatre

From the team behind the award-winning Alzheimer's the Musical: A night to remember! comes Ada & Elsie: Wacko-the-Diddle-oh! - an action-packed celebration of Australia's first female comedy duo, Ada & Elsie, who were a top-rating comedy act during the golden age of Australian radio in the 1940s and 50s.

Written by Maureen Sherlock and directed by Rob George the show recreates the golden days of radio broadcasting with comedy, music, audience participation, live sound effects and drama - both on-air and off! Maureen Sherlock takes the role of Elsie with Carole Yelland as Ada and Malcolm Hansford as Jack Davey.

Ada & Elsie: Wacko-the-Diddle-oh! plays at the fabulously retro Capri Theatre 141 Goodwood Road, Goodwood from 18 to 22 February. Tickets are priced from $20 - $29 and may be purchased through Fringetix and at the venue.

Maureen Sherlock said, 'Ada and Elsie became part of the Australian lexicon wherein any pair of scatterbrained middle-aged women who mangled metaphors was dubbed Ada & Elsie; pets were named after them; lottery syndicates took their name; they were popular fancy dress subjects and they were impersonated on talent shows. They were the Kath & Kim, and thE Eddy & Patsy of their day.

'Created in 1942 by Dorothy Foster, who played Ada opposite Rita Pauncefort as Elsie, Ada and Elsie broke boundaries for women in radio and comedy. They performed alongside the famous names of Australian radio - Dick Bentley, Jack Davey, Roy Rene and Willie Fennell - in the jewel-in-the-crown of the Colgate Palmolive radio unit, 'Calling the Stars.'

Calling the Stars ran for more than ten years and was broadcast nationally from the Trocadero Ballroom in Sydney in front of a live audience of 2,000 people, complete with orchestra, glamorous vocalists in evening dress and dashing announcers in dinner jackets.

Ada and Elsie in their demure frocks, gloves and spectacles with their hair tucked under plain little hats, were introduced as 'those two old-fashioned girls'. But whilst their demeanour was sweet, wide-eyed naivety, the scripts written by Dorothy, were bursting with innuendo.

According to a 1953 'Radio Roundup' Ada and Elsie were, "ribald in a ladylike way and most genteelly vulgar. And very, very funny!" Their act was considered "one of the brightest listening spots of the week."

Ada and Elsie have the distinction of being banned from broadcasting in 1945 by the Postmaster General! And in an uncanny parallel with a 2013 radio incident, the offending script involved a reference to royalty. In 1948 they starred in the first public demonstration of television in Australia.

For sixteen years Ada and Elsie ruled the airwaves on Calling the Stars, The Cashmere Bouquet Show, The Cadbury Show and finally their own thirty minute sit-com, The Ada and Elsie Show.

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