This hilarious show is a combination of three TV episodes, ‘The Arrival’, ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘The Easter Bunny’. In its 13 years on TV, it won multiple British Academy Television Awards.

Two snippets: Emma Chambers, who played Alice, won comedy actress of the year. Trevor Peacock, the mad Jim Trott, penned Herman’s Hermits big 1960’s hit ‘Mrs Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter’, along with many other songs for Joe Brown, Adam Faith and Billy Fury – no, no, no, no, yes he did!

This Rockingham Theatre Company’s production can be seen at the theatre of comedy, The Castle Theatre, 8 Attwood Way, Rockingham, with weekend shows at 8.00 pm; it runs until 29^th August.

The scene is Dibley, a small village in Oxfordshire. The stage was divided in two (set design Larraine Craig, David Heckingbottom), with one-half ‘the vicarage’ and the other was ‘the village hall’ for council meetings. The sets, as always, were top quality built by the cast, Peter Scarrott and Nancy Soroka. Simple props represented the church and Leticia’s bedroom, but with good, well-planned lighting and sound (Jackie Hiscox, Beth Haigh), the minor venues became realistic and convincing.

     The curtains open to show the church congregation being led by the Rev Pottle (Steve Hall) who collapses. His incompetent verger, Alice (Natasha Birch) checks his pulse, but the poor man has died.

     A couple of weeks later, the Chairman of the Parish Council, David Horton (Danny Joyce) has his welcoming committee gathered in his sitting room, awaiting the arrival of the replacement vicar. The doorbell rings, David’s wimpy son Hugo (Callon Leam) answers the door, and to his father’s horror, a female vicar enters. She is the attractive Rev. Geraldine Granger (Larraine Craig).

     The senile and confused, Jim Trott (Rob Walker) welcomes the vicar with his own inimitable style. Church organist, Letitia Cropley (Helen Clark) rushes forward with a plate of her unique sandwiches, but is pushed aside by farmer Owen (Ian Spencer) who wants to check Geraldine’s udders. The longwinded, pedantic, council secretary, Frank (Terry Winter) starts his garrulous welcoming speech.

      Later Geraldine finds that not all of the Hortons are the same, in fact cousin Simon (David Heckingbottom) is ‘quite dishy’. The vicar then has a major upset at one of her first services, with the angry shouting of a strange woman (Lorraine Howes).

When an audience goes to see a play based on a well-known TV series, the expectation of seeing the ‘real’ characters is often unfair, but I know that this show satisfied even the hardest theatregoer. Three of the characters, the vicar, old Jim Trott and Frank Pickle were truly magnificent clones of the original. The rest of the cast must also have put in hours of rehearsal, talking to themselves in front of a mirror, as their mannerisms and facial expressions were superb. The actors’ perfect accents and diction ranged from Alice’s nasal lugubrious delivery, to Owen’s monotonous drawl.

A TV production has the luxury of editing, cutting rapidly from one venue to the next. On stage, this can often mean a set or costume change, and even though this stage crew (Samuel Taylor aided by Tegan Joyce, Jayden Fern, Lorraine Howes) were splendid in both speed and silence, the flow staggered a little. Rather than have a simple blackout, the village yokel changed a sign on an easel, informing us of the next location; in his own quirky way, this helped keep the audience ‘warmed up’ instead of a crippling, simple blackout.

The costumes were many and varied, from the dignified ministerial garb, to Alice’s cookie wedding dress and her zany animated blouse – all the hard work of the dedicated costumiers, Steve and Lara Hall.

Such is the success of this show that all houses have sold out, so two extra nights have been released! As always, ‘The Castle’ under the talented directorship of David Heckingbottom, has given us another professional and hilarious show. Try to catch it.

This two-hour presentation of chuckles by the Rockingham Theatre Company can be seen at the pleasant ‘Castle Theatre’, 8 Attwood Way, Rockingham on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8.00 until 16^th May. There is one matinee at 2.00 pm on Sunday 10^th May.

In the script, it is the present day in Wisconsin, but thankfully, the cast do not have American accents. For this production, I think the location could be London in the middle of a severe winter.  

The set is the lounge of an ultramodern house, where the TV control also activates numerous unreliable gadgets in the home. The very ‘active’ set design is by Larraine Craig and David Heckingbottom, and built by the cast, along with Ian Spencer, Nancy Soroka, Terry Winter and the back stage crew of Callon Leam, Tegan Joyce and Danny Joyce.

The stage manager had a myriad of effects to setup, which coupled with the numerous sound and lighting effects (Callum Leam and Shelley Smith) added greatly to the zany humour of the play. The unfortunate costume seamstress, Lara Hall, must be kept busy each night after the show reassembling various garments.

         With an arrival like that of a genie in a pantomime, brash and outspoken home developer, Mr. Broadbent (Mike Murphy) arrives at his ‘House of the Future’. A home that he built four years ago, but is having trouble selling as many of the gadgets – such as the automatic closet – require adjustment, or simply do not work. With $300,000 tied up in these gadgets, Broadbent is desperate to sell.

       At last, hen-pecked Fred (Rob Walker) and haughty, domineering, Gladys McNicoll (Alison Gibson) are showing interest – well Gladys is, as poor, long suffering Fred is not allowed to think or have opinions.

      Broadbent invites them to stay in the house for a weekend, and to ensure that the sale goes smoothly he has enlisted his proficient and ingenious secretary, Casey (Natasha Birch) to make the couple feel at home. The young, honest but soon to become very confused, real estate agent, Ben (Lee Walker) demonstrates the house’s many gimmicks, and presses them to buy.

       The crotchety and blunt hypochondriac, Mr Cott (Pete Scarrott) is the technician that fitted the technology, and is called back by Broadbent to fine-tune the equipment. The developer thinks some tasty food might soften the potential buyers, so he fills the fridge and hires the loveable, but accident prone, Sue (Beth Haigh) who has just qualified as a chef.

        As the snow outside becomes deeper, Walter Brooks (Danny Joyce), Casey’s insufferable, future father-in-law gets snowed up and arrives at the house looking for shelter. 

       Disaster follows disaster.

Director Larraine Craig has had oodles of experience both as an actor and director. She can come up with some brilliant ideas and characterisation, but even so, there was a patch in the first Act where the cast had trouble melding and getting up the pace. However, very soon the belly laughs and guffaws that we are accustomed to at The Castle were flowing freely.

The highlights were Ben being fed cake, and the uppity Gladys having a conversation on the couch but totally missing the point.

Body and soul went into the performances; enhanced by both the clever visual gadgets and the guaranteed farcical states of undress. Good teamwork. Another winner for Rockingham.

Another huge success for The Castle. A quick survey showed that a third of the audience were first time visitors. Not surprisingly, their next show in August has almost sold out! How many companies can say that? Well done once again.