Last updated 05:17, Friday, 28 November 2008

See How They Run, Victory Hall, Dalston Dolores McQuillin directs the cast of four vicars and a bishop, with a wife, a maid and a police sergeant thrown in, all part of the mayhem created in the farce by Phillip King.

Shock horror: Rob Graham (the intruder), left, Sarah Occleston (the maid) and Chris McNeill (the Rev Arthur Humphrey) in Dalston Dramatic Society’s farce See How They Run

And Dolores manages amazingly to make sense of the madness.

Middle-aged Rev Toop (John Allen) has married a young wife – an actress to boot – and as the central character Sarah Towler pulls this off well.

Around this situation is woven a hilarious farce with not all the vicars as they seem - an army corporal is in there (Richard Looker) and even an escaped German prisoner – Rob Graham brought a gleefully evil persona to this part. The Bishop – Alan Dawson – vague, but was it an act?

A new actor to the boards, Sarah Occleston as Ida the maid, played her essential part to perfection. Another debut was by Chris McNeill as Rev Humphrey - or was he?

The ramifications became legend – a drunken lady in a cupboard (Sandie Denwood) embracing a half-dressed vicar Toop – well it’s a rule there have to be long johns in a farce. Did the police sergeant (Jason Munn) sort it all out? Or was it curtains for the cast?

MARY HESLAM