ACCOMPLISHED performances across the board made sure everything was "perfick" when the Malvern Theatre Players took to the stage to perform The Darling Buds of May on Saturday (October 5).

A good audience enjoyed Andrew Howie's characterisation of Pop Larkin, the play's larger-than-life central figure.

His work was complemented by the equally convincing Mandi Harris in the part of voluptuous matriarch Ma Larkin.

Lorna Fletcher (Mariette), John Denham (The Brigadier) and Lee Farley (Mr Charlton) all made sure the standard was kept high throughout.

The play was much more than a straightforward portrayal of bucolic bliss in 1950s Kent, as there were some thought-provoking themes and even a slightly anarchic flavour to some of the antics, attitudes and announcements of the permanently half-cut Pop.

Besides his serial tax-dodging, the sexual mores of his family were definitely not what you would expect from a book written and set in the 1950s.

His wife loans him out to other women to keep him happy and the play opens with the couple discussing their eldest daughter's ignorance as to the identity of her unborn child's father.

Production values of a professional standard were epitomised by a well-designed and built set that allowed characters to disappear as though going upstairs or into the pantry of the Larkins' comfortable abode.

The next Malvern Theatre Players production, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, starts on January 15.

Jon di Paolo