Belonging to the 1965 Coward collection 'Suite in Three Keys', this light comedy centres around Anna-Mary and Victor Conklin, an extremely wealthy American couple on holiday in Europe. While Anna-Mary plans for a dinner party to impress her snobbish friends - plans which soon begin to go awry - Victor begins to reconsider their relationship after the arrival of the mysterious Maud.

The first of this year's new director's pieces (with Bob Callender directing 'Melons at the Parsonage to complete the duo), I am delighted to have such a strong cast in the guise of Eileen Coan, Paul Crump, Ronae Jolliffe and John Lyne. It promises to be an entertaining satire on the mores of the nouveau riche and I look forward to seeing plenty of bums on seats to support a very hard-working cast and crew.

Paul Hurley, director

MELONS AT THE PARSONAGE

By Nick Warburton

"When two companies become joint winners of a local drama festival the rules decree a tie breaker. Each group must perform an extract from its own play and then an extract from the opposing team's entry. The pieces are very different - one a traditional murder mystery featuring a vicar, a maid and a spinster, the other a piece of dark experimental art, full of symbolic meanings."

Wasn't it Goethe* who remarked "Genug bereits mit den Männern in den Kleidern!"? How prescient she was! I contend that the highest condition to which theatre, or indeed any branch of the arts, can aspire is not the moral betterment of mankind, nor indeed the perfection of the human spirit through the cathartic release of shared emotion - it is the denser and more ambiguous pleasure of getting a bunch of people you might vaguely know to dress up in ridiculous clothes and run around making total prawns of themselves while a bunch of other people laugh and point. It really is smashing. Who knows or cares whether Nick Warburton was thinking along similar lines when he wrote "Melons at the Parsonage"?

* Emily Goethe a corset saleswoman from Dortmund, not that other one.

Bob Callender

P.S. I look forward to seeing plenty of bums.

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