This was great fun. A man playing Mrs Spottsworth? Jill Wyvern in dungarees and wellington boots? Yet this was a good, fun production with an excellent Jeeves.

Exit are a voluntary, community theatre co-operative, keen to tackle different types of production and with many loyal fans. I believe that there were many younger people in the audience on Saturday evening coming upon Wodehouse for the first time and this lively offering would have given them a good impression.

In 1952 Guy Bolton and Wodehouse collaborated on a play featuring Jeeves but without Bertie, called ‘Come on Jeeves’. As soon as the play was finished Plum re-wrote it as fiction entitled ‘Ring for Jeeves’. The stage version keeps all the action in one room of Rowcester Abbey (it was called Towcester here, as in the Guy Bolton version); has more slapstick to the ticket-stealing scene and removes the past acquaintance of Mrs Spottsworth and Captain Biggar.

Keith Brown played a most dignified and calming Jeeves. Other particularly good performances were Javona Gustave who gave us a feisty Jill and Brian Butler who as Rory Lord Carmoyle (having been ennobled since he was merely "Sir Roderick" in Herbert Jenkins's days) was completely credible as an employee of ‘Harriges’. Roberto Prestoni strode about the stage as the invincible Captain Biggar but later was reduced to putty by the charms of Mrs Spottsworth. Exit’s open casting policy (“always the best person who auditions for the role”) resulted in there being a most memorable comic turn by Warren Jansons resplendent in a series of fetching outfits.

The famous radio scene with the voice commentating on the Derby race, where so much is at stake, ably spoken by David Vinter was very well handled.

The room set had a decidedly 1970s air with a high, round-backed wicker chair and some green velour Parker Knoll but this is explained by the company having sourced their furniture from a local charity store. The costumes covered many eras but essentially everything came together wonderfully and everyone left smiling.

Christine Hewitt