This classic British farce, staged countless times since first performed 65 years ago, has lost none of its capacity to amaze and amuse. Amaze because what other country would allow a play which ridicules a bishop and four vicars to be performed? Amuse because their antics, plus those of three ladies and a policeman, are so ridiculous that the only reaction can be to laugh.
The play, set in an English village during World War II where ordinary people appear as eccentrics, yet with whom we can all readily identify, is of the same genre as Dad's Army. The author, Philip King, knew that farce is founded on situation and characterisation. It is unnecessary for the actors to try and be funny as well. In this production, directed by Ian Marston, those who attempt to embellish the humorous behaviour of their characters are less effective than those who portray them as written.
Of the latter, Ian Swann as Reverend Toop, vicar of Merton-cum-Middlewick; Aaron Bixley as Reverend Humphrey who arrives to take his Sunday service; Michael Sharvell-Martin as the Bishop of Lax, uncle of the vicar's wife; Guy Siner as an escaped German internee (almost reprising his memorable Lieutenant Gruber in 'Allo! 'Allo!), and Helen Jeckells as bicycling spinster Miss Skillon, with her comic rag-doll performance when inebriated on cooking sherry, are wholly believable. Whereas Kathryn Dimery as Penelope, Toop's wife; Dale Meeks as Lance-Corporal Winton and her former fellow thespian; Harriet Usher as Ida, the maid, and Frazer Hines as the village bobby, would be more at home in pantomime.
If a brandy-swigging bishop, a parish priest in long-johns, a maid practising semaphore with hot water bottles, hysterical fainting women and lines such as "Don't bicker, vicar" are your summer fare, this production will certainly keep you chuckling long into the winter nights.