It’s Her Turn Now adapted by Michael J Barfoot and based on Out of Order by Ray Cooney. The Mill at Sonning, Sonning Eye, Reading RG4 to 18th November 2023.

4****: William Russell.

This spirited farce up dates Ray Cooney’s Out of order about a junior minister intent of having an assignation with a researcher from the Labour Party in a Westminster hotel within reach of the division bell only for everything to go wrong. It was a hit for Donald Sinden and Michael Williams when it was staged at the Shaftesbury as part of Cooney’s Theatre of Comedy series of plays and Warwick has tried to drag it into the new century by making the minister female and the researcher a married man whose wife is hot on his heels. The gender bending recipe is fine although some of the political stuff is wrong – the Junior Minister would not be required in the House as he or she would have ensured they were paired so that they could have the liason and Prime Ministers do not take a close interest in what they are up to. That would be left to the whips. As usual with farce there are several doors and a window through which everyone at some time has to rush. The window has a balcony which apparently gives access to the suite next door and the sash has an unfortunate habit of collapsing and stunning anyone who happens to be looking into the room at the time. The Minister and her side kick, presumably a parliamentary private secretary, pull back the curtains and iscover what they take to be a dead body pole axed on the window sill which has to be removed. Add the Minister’s husband, who has decided to come to town uninvited, the Labour boyfriend’s wife, who has come to see what he is up to, an ever more frustrated hotel manager, a venal hotel waiter who for a pound or two will provide whatever anyone wants and the discovery that the body is not dead, just stunned and happens to be the detective hired by the boyfriend’s wife and you have a ripe old mix. The laughs do come and director David Warwick has kept his cast on their toes throughout. The cast respond well but the sex changes do not really work – the essence of farce is that the man has to be the one in trouble. He also has to get out of it in the end losing his trousers along the way while rushing in and out of all those doors. Nor is the apron stage of the Mill is really not suited to the demands of a play which needs to be boxed in to a proscenium stage – there are no close encounters as it were. However the laughs did come. It might have been funnier had the junior minister been a little more like the various ladies currently strutting the Commons stage – personally I would have chosen a Suella Braverman lookalike or possibly a Priti Patel one or going back a but an Edwina Currie type and made clear the PM was called Truss – which is not to say that Elizabeth Elvin doesn’t get the laughs just that a cougar actress would have been funnier. Best performance of the night comes from the sash window which never misses a cue but ut at the end of the day the Ayes have it.

Cast

Raphael Bar - John Worthington.

Jules Brown – Nurse Foster.

Eric Carte – Mr Willey.

Felicity Duncan - Georgia Pigden.

Elizabeth Elvin – Mrs Willey.

Harry Costelow – The Manager.

James Holmes – The Waiter.

Michell Morris – Tracey Worthington.

Charlie Parker-Swift – The Body.

Creatives

Director –David Warwick.

Set Designer – Alex Marker.

Costume Designer – Natalie Titchener.

Lighting Designer – Graham Weymouth.