Reporter: Colin Meredith
Date online: 12/06/2008

St Ann's Players latest production Run For Your Wife by Ray Cooney was just the ticket on a cold February night. The superb cast had the audience in stitches with their consistently brilliant performances and high energy. The story centres on taxi driver John Smith who has two wives, Mary and Barbara striving to keep the existence of each wife from the other, John lives in separate homes: he rooms with Mary in the mornings and beds Barbara in the evenings. Only a tight schedule enables John to maintain his double life and keep his bigamy a secret. Unfortunately, John’s careful plan is disrupted when he intervenes in a mugging and gets bonked on the head. Treated in hospital, John is later dropped off at Mary’s place at a time when he should have been with Barbara. The appearance of a pair of nosy detectives complicate matters further as John desperately struggles to hold his scheme together while avoiding arrest and suspicion from his wives.

Add to this twisted mix a wry, unemployed loafer named Stanley Gardner, a scandal-hungry cub reporter, and a highly effeminate upstairs neighbour, Bobby Franklin, and you have the makings of an hilarious evenings entertainment. The situation gets so bad that when John finally wants to come clean and reveal his illicit secret, no one believes him!

What is clear, however, is that the actors producer Barbara Fielden has cast in Run for Your Wife complement each other well and get a generous supply of laughs in equal portions. Ian Mansfield is marvellous as John, evoking as much pity for his wild misadventures as he does hilarity, his desperate attempts to right wrongs that get increasingly out of hand is a joy to watch. Tim Kieley as lazy Stanley proved an excellent foil for John and had impeccable timing together with amazing facial contortions and double takes. The detectives, David Stopford and Peter Dignan Granger, were excellent at keeping up the pace and the part of Bobby, the token gay, was wonderfully played by Andy McKay, getting solid laughs on all his entrances.

Sue Howarth as Mary, wife Number 1, is always a joy to watch and was very effective in her portrayal of a befuddled homemaker on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while Judith Mansfield provided a fair degree of sexual tension as wife Number 2, Barbara. Both are gifted performers who held the farce together well. The set is first-rate and built perfectly to represent two dwellings at the same time, and allows the actors to move in and out of the frame at a feverish pace, without the need for time-consuming scene changes. Run for Your Wife proved to be a pure crowd-pleaser with the Belfield audience leaving the auditorium thoroughly entertained.

Run for your Wife by Ray Cooney
St Anne's Players
Parish Hall, Brocklebank Road, Rochdale
Friday 24 February 2006