There's a treat in store for Highbury Little Theatre patrons next week, when the Sutton Coldfield group launches Alan Ayckbourn's romp, Time of My Life, as its final production of the season.
Group stalwart Rob Phillips comes enterprisingly into his own, playing the five very individual waiters.
The production is directed by his wife Denise, who says she is sure he will remember which waiter comes on when by the time of curtain-up next Tuesday.
Behind the Phillips faAade lie Bengie ( young, confused, doesn't speak a word of English), Aggi (romantic and liable to launch into spontaneous fullblooded Italian arias without warning), Tuto (head waiter, always cheerful and happy to please), Calvinu (elderly restaurant owner) and Dinka (effeminate, surly and hating his job).
It's going to be fun.
Paul Millross, of Hall Green Little Theatre, directs the Playhouse Entertainments Group production of Entertaining Mr Sloane at Birmingham's Crescent Theatre next week - and he has picked up an intriguing story about its author, the late Joe Orton.
In the company is Laurence Inman - who actually met Orton on the corner of Grays Inn Road, without knowing who he was, while out walking in London in the summer of 1967. They exchanged pleasantries, after which Orton said he had just written a play.
The play, Paul Millross suspects, was What the Butler Saw, which was first staged in 1969, two years after Orton's death.
He said: "A few months after that meeting, Orton was murdered and Laurence saw his picture in the paper and suddenly realised he was the man he had met on the corner.
" And when his diaries appeared, on the date in question he had written, 'Got up. Had a crap. Went for a walk'.
"That's amazing." Entertaining Mr Sloane will run from Tuesday to Saturday and will raise funds for the Queen Alexandra College, the national centre in Harborne for people with visual impairment or other disabilities. It will include a sign language performance for the deaf and an audio-described performance for the visually impaired which will incorporate a touch-tour of the set and costumes before curtain-up.
Sad news from Sutton Coldfield, with the announcement that Royal Sutton Opera's recent production of Die Fledermaus was the group's final appearance.
After 53 years of presenting grand opera, its inability to attract enough new members - particularly men - with voices of the right quality has forced its hand.
Chairman Jean Heap says: "In addition to this, grand opera is very costly to present and over the years our funds have depleted because of dwindling ticket sales and the difficulty of raising sponsorship. We're grateful to all those who have supported us over the years - patrons, friends and audiences."
Hall Green Little Theatre stalwart Roy Palmer has finished refurbishing his bathroom. He has also come through the wedding of his daughter Helen and last week's send-off party which saw her and bridegroom Alex Smith off to Heathrow for a honeymoon in Las Vegas and Hawaii.
All of which means he was able to concentrate again on directing The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, which opened on Friday and continues until Saturday.
He designed the set and did most of the construction of the two- storey house that is involved - and when Little Voice finishes he will be straight into directing a cast of 45 Youth Theatre members in Street Child and the senior group in Ray Cooney's farce, It Runs in the Family.
So he would have been a busy man, even without the wedding and the bathroom - and the bathroom has been a venture that his wife Margaret was anxious to see completed because some wedding guests were going to be staying with them.
"She wanted it to be right for when they came", Roy explains. "We've only been married 38 years."
There were, he beams, one or two crises.
"My wife has ideas above her station and suddenly decided she wanted tiles on the floor. So I lifted all the floorboards and found the joists were not strong enough.
"Then I touched the wall with my foot and the plaster fell off. It's been one tremendous cockup for eight weeks - but we made it in the end."
The central role in Little Voice is played by 14-year-old Katharine Johnson, tackling a character who imitates the singers she plays on her records.
Roy Palmer says: "We're not looking for perfection but we think she's quite extraordinary. There's just one place where she mimes."
We were assured by those who understand these things that yesterday, the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year, was the Devil's Date.
Naturally, as I am writing these witterings before midnight, I have no way of knowing whether we have managed to survive.
If we have, let us rejoice. If we haven't, I assume we are continuing our discussion somewhere in the Great Dress Circle. Otherwise, I'm just wasting my last few hours.
