Performances will be at the New Park Centre, New Park Road, Chichester from Wednesday, April 1 to Saturday April 4 at 7.30pm.

"This is my first play with them," Vicky says.

"My friend Sophie was the lead in the last one, Cold Comfort Farm, and she suggested I join them."

Vicky, who is currently working part-time in Smith's and also in
marketing and in the box office at Havant Arts Centre, dreams one day of
running a theatre.

But she's also enjoying performance, coming to the Chichester Players on the back of a degree in performing arts at the University of Chichester.

"Performance is important, but because I didn't have such a great time
on the degree, my confidence has dropped. I thought if I could join the
Chichester Players, I could get my confidence back up again.

"I play Queenie, the middle daughter of the family, and she is a bit of a black sheep. She has ideas above her station. She is going out with the next-door neighbour Billy who goes off to sea.

"She does not like that very much and gets involved with a married man. She causes a bit of a scandal.

"It's a brilliant part to play. It's the part I wanted to play. I had seen a little bit of the film.

"We have joked in rehearsals it is a forerunner to EastEnders. It's quite soapy in the way it focuses on family life.

It is also quite comedic, but not so much playing for laughs as just the things they come out with, which are quite funny.

"It also includes some stirring speeches. It was set between the wars
and the father talks about how England picks itself up in a crisis.
"It's quite relevant to today. It ties in with the crisis of the recession, though obviously the recession is different."

Directing the show is Steve Futcher.

"Bringing this play to the stage has been a wish of mine for many years," says Steve.

"Familiar as I am with the film version, I have also been lucky enough
to see it staged in London, at a fringe theatre above a pub in Chelsea. It was an excellent production, a tiny space, cramped, just what it would have been like living in the Gibbons' terraced house with their large extended family at that time – 1919 to 1939.

"Here at the New Park Centre we, too, are hoping to create the atmosphere of that period, whether it's the feeling of the cramped house of the fashion and hairstyles of the time, the power of
uncertainty and the hope of what is to come.

"Although considered a period piece, I hope this production will show it's very much a play of our time."

¦ Tickets £8 from 01243 786650.