Rotary Club of Elthorne-Hillingdon

Thanks for Life Gala Dinner

Rotary Club of Elthorne Hillingdon ran a very special event to raise funds to help meet our commitment to the $200 million challenge set by Bill & Melinda Gates. Rotary in Britain and Ireland (RIBI) is using the anniversary of the founding of Rotary (February 23^rd) to hold a week's worth of events (running from February 20^th to February 27^th) specifically with this objective.

On Saturday February 27^th we held a Gala event – three course dinner, plus a one-hour one-woman show, Royal Mistresses, starring Jean Heard, for the extremely reasonable price of £25 per head, with all profits from the ticket price, plus any additional efforts during the evening going towards the Gates Challenge.  During the course of the evening we raised a total of £2,100, and our other activities during the week took us to £2,750.

A review of the show said:

"Holding an audience spellbound for over an hour is an incredibly difficult thing to do.For an actor to do this alone is an extraordinary achievement.On Saturday, Jean Heard made it look effortless, delighting an audience made up of members of Elthorne Hillingdon Rotary Club and their friends. The 120 people gathered in St John’s Church Hall were treated to Ms Heard, a local actor, portraying four royal mistresses in a show written and directed by Elthorne-Hillingdon Rotary member Joan Greening.Each section of the show depicted a different character from history, all of whom had connections with the theatre and all of whom became the mistress of a King.From the Restoration street-walker discussing her “good friend” Nell Gwynne to the bitter and heartbroken Queen Adelaide telling of her husband’s affaire with Dorothy Jordan, Jean Heard’s characterisation was faultless, with accents slipping seamlessly from the east-end of London to German, and using the simplest of props and costumes to give a flavour of each period.Each story was rich with historical detail and the audience came away with an intimate knowledge of four extraordinary women, the times that they lived in and the Kings that loved them".