A NEW production of Terence Rattigan’s comedy While the Sun Shines has opened at the Theatre Royal Bath, where it runs until Saturday, July 30, directed by Christopher Luscombe (2016 Olivier Award-winner Nell Gwynn). The cast includes Michael Cochrane (The Archers, Downton Abbey, The Iron Lady), Tamla Kari (The Musketeers, Cuckoo, The Inbetweeners), Rob Heaps (Home Fires, And Then There Were None), Rupert Young (Merlin) and Alexandra Dowling (The Musketeers, Game of Thrones).

On the eve of his marriage to the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Randall, the Earl of Harpenden makes the mistake of allowing a drunken American Lieutenant to spend the night in his Albany apartment. Things start to go awry the following morning when the Earl arranges a little female company for his charming and mischievous guest in the form of Mabel Crum, a former girlfriend with a penchant for Americans...but it is his fiancée, Lady Elizabeth, who turns up at the flat!

Add into the mix Colbert, a young French officer who also fancies his chances with Elizabeth, and her garrulous father, an inveterate gambler, and the stage is set for hilarious confusion. In this flurry of crossed-wires and mistaken identities Rattigan shows himself to be a master farceur.

While the Sun Shines ran for over one thousand performances in the West End in the early 1940s, before transferring to Broadway. The leading critic of the day, James Agate, described it as “delightful, a little masterpiece of tingling impertinence”. The play was made into a film in 1947 directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Joyce Grenfell, Margaret Rutherford and Ronald Squire.

While the Sun Shines appears at the Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday, July 30.

Tickets are available from the Theatre Royal Bath Box Office on 01225 448844 or online at theatreroyal.org.uk