Sequel toa classic farce on stage

Dennis Harrison is directing as West Wittering Players return to the world of Ray Cooney’s Run For Your Wife which they staged last year.

This time round they are offering the sequel, Caught In The Net which picks up the story 20 yearson.theoriginalplaytellsof John Smith, a London cab driverwithtwowives,twolivesanda very precisely planned schedule for juggling them both. And he is juggling them still when we see him again in Caught In The Net – but this time with added complications. The show will be at West Wittering Memorial Hall from Wednesday, April 10-Saturday, April 13, with tickets £10 and £8 from Sayas News, Rookwood Road, phone 01243 513110.

Dennis said: “I was quite surprised there was a sequel but I realised that at the end of Run For Your Wife neither the wives knowsoftheexistenceoftheother wife. One thought the other was a nun and the other thought that the other was a transvestite andnowhereweare20yearson. It's the same characters but in this one the play introduces the two children of the two wives and the two children meet on the internet which causes quite a panic! Run For Your Wife last year was very well received. The place was full of laughter for every performance.”

Dennis had to stress last time that the company were depicting attitudes which probably wouldn't go down too well now and which were very much from a different era. Maybe that's slightly less the case now with the show set two decades on, in 2004. “But John Smith is still trying to keep the two sides of his life apart, still trying to live the two lives but then he realises thatthechildrenhavemetonthe internet which causes him quite a worry! It is very much a farce.”