★★★★★

RICHARD Bean’s award-winning play, freely adapted from a 250-year-old example of Commmedia del Arte, is set in Brighton and updated to 1963 complete with a live skiffle band.

It centres round a prototype Del Boy, Francis Henshaw, trying to hold down two jobs simultaneously and pleasing both masters. What ensues is pure farcical mayhem.

Although the play places a heavy burden on the actor playing Henshaw, it also requires a solid framework of support from the rest of the cast.

In this production Mark Best and colleagues rose to the challenge and delivered highly entertaining performances.

Among the excellent performances there were standouts from Rose Hall-Smith – a delightful portrayal of dim-wittedness and a knockabout (literally) cameo of an octogenarian waiter from Bran Pitt, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Bob Ryder, co-director along with Tony Brownings.

Their direction moved the piece at a lively pace as did the numerous scene changes.