The farce master Cooney at the Mill at Sonning

The wrong briefcase sparks the action in this pacy production

Farce can be, and often is, ridiculous, particularly those written by Ray Cooney. They are also funny and this was no exception.

Steven Pinder was very funny, ridiculous and often hilarious as Henry Perkins, a mild accountant who picks up the wrong briefcase on the underground and finds that it contains £1.5m in used notes.

So it is drop everything and rush off to Spain with his wife Jean.

Natasha Gray sparkled as a scatty wife who becomes gradually more drunk as the play proceeds. She was troubled, angry, confused and even occasionally jolly and managed each emotion with ease.

Of course, nobody is going anywhere beyond the confines of the Perkins home in Fulham, but mayhem soon ensues there. There is a man with a strong foreign accent who keeps phoning and demanding the return of the ‘burf cruise’.

This became a running joke throughout the play once it was established that what he was demanding was a ‘briefcase’.

Farce, of course, is built on a lie that goes wrong and the cast here played it up to the hilt for laughs.

It is ensemble acting of a high order where no actor should pull attention to him or herself, but focus on the split second timing and group endeavour. This was achieved very well indeed by Eric Carte and Stuart Neal as two very different kinds of ‘odd’ policemen.

Betty Johnson was right over the top as blousy Elizabeth and Harry Gostelow, as her husband, gave an impressive performance of a man so confused he doesn't know where he is or what is happening.

Charlie Parker-Swift’s portrait of a confused cab driver grew in intensity as the farce proceeded.

Last, but not least, Joseph Pharoah had a four-minute cameo part at the end and managed to blend into the ensemble easily and convincingly.

How did the cast, under Ron Aldridge’s pacey direction, manage to remember all the lines with all those myriad variations and tricky bits of business?

I don’t know, but they did.

DEREK ANSELL