With ROY MARSDEN, Artistic Director, Palace Theatre

We are hard at work rehearsing the New Palace Theatre Company's next production, Perfect Wedding.

Like our last presentation, Noel Coward's Volcano, at the Palace Theatre, Westcliff, Perfect Wedding is a premiere.

However, in this case we are fortunate to have the writer Robin Hawdon around in rehearsals to help us with his comments and last-minute amendments to the script.

Robin is well-known to theatre audiences as the creator of the long running West End comedy Don't Dress For Dinner.

Set in a country hotel on the morning of a wedding, Perfect Wedding is a new farce in the classic tradition, complete with a saucy chambermaid, a battle-axe mother-in-law and a cheating husband.

(If you want an "Ideal" husband, you'll have to see this week's play at the Palace; the touring production of Oscar Wilde's classic comedy!)

Like many farces, doors play an important role in the action of Perfect Wedding.

We won't actually get to rehearse on the set until two days before the first performance, so we have to be particularly careful that the mark-out of the stage plan on the rehearsal room floor is accurate.

The set is not the only thing missing from rehearsals.

Comedy, more than any other theatrical style, relies on audience response and we won't really know if it's working until we get the play in front of an audience. And unlike television, we don't have luxury of a pre-recorded laughter track!

A different type of comedy is explored in a play by Roy Smiles which I will be directing in the Dixon Studio at the end of July.

This is a late addition to the Palace's summer programme, added after our latest brochure went to press.

Roy Smiles was a comedian before he became a playwright, and the play Stand Up (which is set backstage at a seedy comedy club) offers a funny but moving first -hand account of the insecure world of the comedy circuit.

Robin Hawdon, Oscar Wilde and Roy Smiles all make us laugh for different reasons. And laughter is one of the most gratifying sounds a director can hear in a theatre.

Wedding hitch - A scene from Perfect Wedding

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