Comedy will have you in stitches

Buy photos » The hilarious farce Nil by Mouth will be performed by STAC at the Swan Theatre. (s

AN HILARIOUS farce about the NHS is set to have people in fits of giggles when it is performed by the Swan Theatre Amateur Company (STAC) next week.

Nil by Mouth is a brilliant comedy written by John Chapman that follows the chaos which erupts as patients, agency nurses, doctors and sisters battle it out at the start of another busy weekend on the under-funded and under-staffed mixed ward of St Christopher’s Hospital.

Poor old Evelyn Keats is losing her memory and getting confused and when she ends up switching units in a hospital where all the wards are named after famous English poets, her own name just multiplies the confusion.

Her husband is with her - a doctor of divinity, not medicine - while the staff have a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, meaning the room for misunderstandings is vast, especially on an understaffed, busy ward on a Saturday afternoon.

A catalogue of disastrous mistaken identities leads to wrongful diagnosis, visitors becoming patients, and all manner of medical mishaps.

Directed by Tim Crow, Nil by Mouth has a great cast of lively characters whose mouths are full of hot air, whose minds wrestle with confusion, but whose hearts are well-meaning.

The play runs at the Swan Theatre from Tuesday, February 14 to Saturday, February 18. Tickets cost £9.50 (£7 first night, £8 concessions) and are available from the box office on 01905 611427.