Everyone wants their wedding day to be a happy one but its 1972 and for Mark Greenhalgh and Deidre Ollerenshawe from Rochdale ‘oop north’ it’s just not going to be so easy. His family are non religious and loaded, while hers are working class catholics and her dad is a staunch conservative. Mark went out on his stag night with his future father in law, Deidre’s brothers, their grandad and his own best man and Mark ends up being thrown out of a strip club, very drunk chained to both a lampost in the town centre and a lifesize blow up rubber doll stolen from the stripper .
Worse still the Priest who is marrying them the next day has been dragged along on the stag do with them and he is now flat on the pavement blind drunk looking at the doll and Mark and convinced he’s been sent to Hell! Then the police arrive and arrest Mark! That’s just the end of Act One and we haven’t even had the wedding ceremony yet let alone the reception! That’s when the families have to get along with each other and who invited the Priest and gave him a full bottle to drink from?
Add to that an increasingly drunk Grandad who can’t keep his mouth shut about Mark’s mum’s former love life and who also seems to know her a bit too well himself, rampant snobbery and the blow up adult size rubber doll that talks (“Ooooh you are a big boy!”) and you have the brilliantly funny play ‘Fur Coat and no Knickers’ by Mike Harding (known as The Rochdale Cowboy). When someone made the first sign that said, ‘Just Married’ they never knew how well it would apply to Mark and Deidre with ‘Just’ being the operative word!
The last time Courts performed this play it proved to be one of the most popular plays they had ever produced so tickets are already going fast. To book your tickets please call the box office on 08453 005264 for Fur Coat and No Knickers, Feb 9th -11th 2012 at the Thameside Theatre Grays. Tickets are already selling fast so get yours as soon as you can.
