Fur Coat and No Knickers

This is a tale of two families, the Ollerenshaws and the Greenhalghs, the former with a mother, a devoted Roman Catholic, who is trying to keep her recalcitrant family true to the faith and the latter with a mother determined to bury her working class upbringing and in particular her youthful flirtations with American Airmen!

When Deidre is about to marry a son of the Greenhalghs, the true characters of the family members come into the open. Richard Wilshaw as the fascist father, gives a strong performance while his wife Edith (Janice Lewis) struggles to keep the cart on the wheels. Her restraint eventually breaks, giving vent to her true feelings in the face of her opposite number Muriel (Sheila Hulse) as the wedding breakfast ends in disarray.

Much of the play centres round the Stag Night of bridegroom-to-be Mark and the male members of the cast. Steven Coward provides a stand out performance, culminating in a hilarious episode involving a blow up doll. The other main protagonist, in the rather protracted drunk scenes, is the priest, Father Molloy, played with great verve by Laurence Hayward. Also adding to the mayhem were Anthony Lancashire (Kevin), Danny Hastie (Peter) and Alex Haigh (Hamish).

Mike Harding provides many great one liners, particularly in Act 1, and many of these fall to Grandad Nip, a character which Steve Radford makes the most of. From the general audience response this was certainly a successful repeat of this play for the Rep. 

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