Midhurst Players’ first big show for more than four years.

Nicci Pennicott will be directing Noel Coward's Relative Values at the South Downs Centre Memorial Hall in Midhurst from November 29-December 2.

​“It's been quite a long time!” Nicci says. “I can't even remember what the last big show was. But we've had regular monthly meetings. I'm on the committee and we've kept in contact and we have always planned for the future. We planned to do a show in April 2020 and rehearsals were under way. We were doing Busybody which was about an elderly cleaner who finds a body in the office that she's cleaning... And obviously that couldn't go ahead. We then decided that we would keep on thinking about what we could do, maybe one here, maybe one there but we had all the lockdowns and we just had to put everything on hold, I'm afraid.

“But now we are back. We have done a couple of little pub theatre things, just smaller things in the meantime but this is the first time we are back in our usual venue. It's a relief and it's a real joy. All the actors have missed it. I have missed it and it is so lovely to be back rehearsing, and the rehearsals are going very well.

"Everyone is working very hard. Midhurst is a small place. We all know each other. We've all stayed in touch. I suppose there was always a danger that we wouldn't come back, and a lot of amateur groups are falling by the wayside but our plan was always to put on something else and it is lovely that it is now happening. We've got a good core of actors. The issue is getting the crew but we've got a very good crew for this one.”

As for the play, it is Nicci’s choice: “I did have a look around for a number of plays but I had a very successful Blithe Spirit in 2017 which I adored doing. I wanted to do something that met several criteria, something that had a large enough cast so that lots of people could get back into it. There are ten in the cast of this. And also Noel Coward is someone people know. I didn't want to do anything too obscure.

"We wanted to do something that would get our audiences back.”

Coward is, though, a challenge to do: “He is wordy but the language is beautiful and the characters are beautifully drawn and we are having great fun and working hard.

“Relative Values is very much a piece of its time. He wrote it in the late 40s and it's about changing attitudes to class. There is an aristocratic family that have servants and it gets announced that the son is going to marry a Hollywood film star, and there is a lot of shock horror at what she is going to be like. She turns out to be the typical Hollywood film star. She's got an ego and she has obviously got baggage!

“The cast are loving it and they are really good and there are some really good relationships between the different characters that are emerging.”