Archives - April 2010

RUN FOR YOUR WIFE
by Ray Cooney

Produced by Clare-Louise Mitchell

THE PLAY

1980s farce. John is a taxi driver with a secret. He lives in Wimbledon with his wife, Mary. He also lives in Streatham with his wife, Barbara. Only some very precise diary arrangements allow this to remain a secret - and when he ends up in hospital after a bit of an affray, those arrangements get thrown right out of kilter.
As the play opens, both John's wives - unaware he is on his way back from the hospital to the Wimbledon flat - are busily reporting him missing. Unfortunately, this draws a certain amount of unwelcome police attention, from Detective Sergeant Troughton in Wimbledon and Detective Sergeant Porterhouse in Streatham: something John will be aware of all too soon. For the moment, his problems only appear to extend to managing the wife situation, for which he enlists the help of Mary's layabout upstairs neighbour, Stanley.
Between them, they manage to convince Mary that John is a hero - having saved an old lady from being mugged - and Barbara that John is on a farm near Gatwick, having broken down. It starts to get complicated, though, as an Evening Standard reporter gets a photo of the hero and both Troughton and Porterhouse have suspicions about why there should be two John Smiths, neither of whom quite match the details given at the hospital. Added to that, John is booked for a romantic day in bed with Barbara, while Mary wants him to stay at home and rest.

While John heads to Streatham, Stanley tries to hold the fort at Wimbledon by persuading Porterhouse that he is in fact the other John Smith, much to Mary's confusion. Meanwhile Barbara has met her new upstairs neighbour, the extremely gay dressmaker Bobby, who is surprised to discover John hiding the fact that he is on the front page of the Evening Standard by eating the newspaper. It seems John's day cannot get much worse, but then Troughton turns up at the Streatham flat, closely followed by Stanley. In what probably seems like a good idea at the time, John claims that he and Stanley are having an affair, hence the second flat. Barbara, who still believes that Stanley is a farmer, gets increasingly cross with her bedroom plans being interrupted. And then Troughton lets slip to Mary that John and Stanley are gay, at about the time Bobby's decorating goes terribly wrong and red paint starts to pour through Barbara's ceiling.

When a furious Mary and the hapless but well-meaning Porterhouse also arrive at the Streatham flat, John compounds his problems by explaining Barbara away as a transvestite rather than a woman. It does little to pacify either wife, who furiously square up to each other. Troughton loses patience with the apparent outbreak of mass sexual perversion and John, reluctantly, realises the game is up. He confesses all, expecting to be led away to prison - only to find nobody believes him!
The story ends with him defeatedly giving Stanley a kiss...

FROM THE GROUP

...I find myself in two minds at the end of "Run For Your Wife". I am desperately happy that the cast and audiences seemed to enjoy the performance but so unhappy that it all seems to have come to an end. I thoroughly enjoyed putting together this play and I think on the whole it fulfilled all I required of it. Albeit large audiences would have been great, all that attended were laughing and that's what counts.
I am so pleased with all the performances put in by the cast. They have done such a good job of learning their lines but especially of putting such character into their performances. I had the perfect coppers, a great pair of protagonists, some hilarious wives, a brilliant gay neighbour and on the ball journalist. It has been such a pleasure to work with every single one of them. All the actors have made this process really enjoyable and I thank them all for their hard work and the fun they injected into every rehearsal.
I was so very lucky to have so many people wanting to be involved in this production, I didn't have to especially ask anyone to help out, they all volunteered. I had an absolutely fabulous backstage crew. I got Mike L to Stage Manage, which relieved so much pressure, Damo and t'other Mike on sounds and lighting, the ever dependable Mary on prompt and some fantastic people on Front of House. On the lead up to the performance the Stage build team did a great job building a difficult set, Martin was brilliant on props and Zahir did a lot of hard work on costumes. Overall I have to be grateful for so much input from so many helpful people, it made my first producer job a very enjoyable experience.
All in all we had fun and but on a great comic show for our audiences. It has been said that there is a Run For Your Wife 2 so I'll keep my eye on that for next time!

Clare-Louise - Producer

The Production Diary

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