If the audience find Peter Tilbury's new play half as funny as we did in rehearsals we are well away!
It is set in a doctor's surgery in Paris in 1911, and I'm the doctor. It's fairly classic farce in a way, although not a Brian Rix type farce.
What happens is my character comes back after spending the night with his mistress only to find his wife has returned unexpectedly. In order to explain his actions he says he was with a patient who was dying. He just picks a name off a notepad by the phone and, of course, the next thing is the patient by the same name turns up at the surgery about two seconds later.
My character then has to pretend it is this patient's father who is dying, but of course his father is absolutely fine too. So I have to persuade this father to go along with the story.
The assumption in this play is that men will go along with covering up each other's affairs. But unfortunately this chap won't. That's where the problem arises. There is also an added sub-plot where I have to pretend I am going to save this guy's life by inventing a machine called an aortic dilator - which of course doesn't exist and which looks oddly enough like something out of Dr Who.
It is huge fun working with Anton Rodgers although we both said the other day that we were slightly worried that people would look at our names and think, "Oh we'll go and see nice Anton and Peter, that'll be nice family entertainment."
In fact, Under The Doctor is quite bawdy at times - what if Dr Who fans see Under The Doctor and think, "We'll go and see that."? I can just see the front row sitting there with completely open mouths. But that's good too.
