This was my first appearance with WADS, although I had been involved with the Easter & Spring Bank productions in a backstage rôle. Here, it was ‘in at the deep end’, because it was a main character, but it was also a summer production, which required a commitment of over three months, including two performances a week during the school summer holidays.
The Reverend Toop is rather ineffectual character, prone to bewilderment & exasperation, and occasional panic, such as when sex-starved spinster Miss Skillon (played with gusto by Helen Argument) insists on nursing him rather too enthusiastically after he fell over her bicycle! This play certainly tested my ability to learn a script after such a long time, but luckily I was not deterred.