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 wonderfully zany play can be seen at the Old Mill Theatre, on the corner of Mends Street and Mill Point Road in South Perth. The two and a half-hour performances are nightly at 8.00 until Saturday 11^th October. There are two matinees, one on Saturday the other on Sunday. Part of the proceeds will go to Telethon 2014.

George Boyd’s magnificent set designs, (here built by George, Liam Kirwan, and Brendan Tobin) always seem to leave other theatrical groups behind when it comes to innovation. For this show, we have two revolving stages, surely a first in Perth for both Community and Professional Theatre.

There are no fewer than nine sets! Including a kitchen, theatre, the Prince’s Chambers, coffee shoppe, dining room, stagecoach, a leafy copse, Amy Hardwood’s room, and a colonnade. Adrian Ashman’s décor painting is immaculate and when coupled with Lesley Sutton’s well-sourced unusual props, most realistic.

The stage crew of David Seman and Owen Davis, under the supervision of stage manager Rob Warner, were amazingly efficient with their numerous complicated scene changes. In between scenes, they had to silently work on décor modifications ready for the next stage revolve. Congratulations on the efficiency and silence.

        It is the Regency Period in England, around 1815, and we find ourselves at the theatre with the mad Prince Regent, the foppish Prince of Wales (Rodney van Groningen) who is soon to become George lV – as soon as his even madder father, George lll (Brendan Tobin) dies. George is watching a production of ‘Julius Caesar’, but is relying upon his head butler, Blackadder ((Joe Isaia) to explain the storyline. When Brutus (David Gregory) stabs Caesar (Michael Lamont) the butler has to explain the difference between reality and acting, to the distressed Prince who thinks he has just witnessed a REAL murder.

        Blackadder is frustrated by the fact that such a brainless idiot should have so much wealth, and sets out to relieve the Prince Regent of some of his wealth. As always, Blackadder relies upon the help of his filthy dogsbody, Baldrick (Keith Scrivens) to achieve his ambitions. With more money, Blackadder could perhaps gain the love of the Coffee Shoppe owner, Mrs Miggins (Jacqui Weaver).

        Perhaps Blackadder can find a wealthy wife for the Prince; there is the beautiful but mentally immature, Amy Hardwood (Clare Fazackerley Wood) perhaps she would make a perfect suitor; or perhaps Sally Cheapside (Natalie Watson), as she has a daft, rich father.

        In this tale, Blackadder faces world leaders and famous authors in his pursuit of wealth.

Director David Gregory again leads this wonderful team. David manages to squeeze every ounce of humour from the situations. With the unique strange dialogue of Baldrick, to the cutting tongue of Blackadder, the gushing foppishness of Prince George – along with his demanding athletic performance – the laughs flowed endlessly.

This was the opening night and the techies, lighting (Liam Kirwan) and sound (George Boyd) cue card must have looked like a Harry Potter novel with the dozens of cues, many of which had to be carried out with split second accuracy. There were literally a couple of dozen different scenes, which on TV could be easily edited, but on stage, the actors have to move from one set to another. An audience can accept looking at an empty, lit set waiting for the actor to enter, but to sit in the dark until the actor is perfectly in place before putting on the lamps definitely slows the flow of the comedy. This results in the poor actors having to warm up the audience at the beginning of every scene. The techies were really superb, but just that little bit earlier with the lighting would help.

If you are a fan of the TV series, this truly magnificent cast give their all and the characters instantly recognisable. If you are too young to know the series, then go along and see a madcap production presented perfectly.

This whole production oozes quality, from the tickets, the best programme I have ever seen for a community production, the fine scenery, Clare Wood and Jacqui Warner’s stunning costumes and last but not least, the action packed, perfectly paced acting – great chemistry. An excellent show.

I do not need to say ‘See it’ as most people will have booked already. Be warned, the tickets are selling faster than last year – and it was a sell-out.