SEE HOW THEY RUN

Ian Dickens Productions at the Civic Theatre

Philip King's trusty wartime farce is a classic of its kind. Tea with the vicar, men without trousers, drunken spinster, a web of improbable coincidences.

Ian Marston's workmanlike production had an excellent Humphrey in Jeffrey Holland, whose precise timing and facial expressions kept the audience laughing. Guy Siner, the other sitcom star on stage in this experienced cast, was merely required to reheat his Gruber. Dale Meeks failed to convince me that he was a Coward actor - working class boys just didn't, not in those days, dear boy ...

Kathryn Dimmory was engagingly daffy as the hyperactive Mrs Vicar, but the star of the show for me was Rachel Izen as Miss Skillon - a brillant physical performance, fainting, collapsing, subsiding, crawling all over the furniture and Alan Miller Bunford's solidly traditional stage set.