For a fun night of madness & mayhem Castle Hill Players A BAD YEAR FOR TOMATOES is just the thing. Written by John Stanley in 1973 the director Meredith Jacobs has filled the stage with a collection of crazy characters that keep the audience entertained and laughing to the very end.

The central character is Myra Marlowe, a television actress fed up with the demands and pressures of her career, who leases a cottage in the tiny hamlet of Beaver Haven in order to escape Hollywood and write her autobiography. The role requires an actor who can carry the entire show on her shoulders and Annette van Roden does just that. She is wonderfully cast and very believable in her role.

Myra is successful in turning aside the offers pressed on her by her long-time agent Tom Lamont, played with just the right amount of sincerity and double dealing boy charm by Ben Freeman. However coping with a stream of zany neighbours is a different matter. Firstly, we have the two nosy “hospitality” ladies supposedly welcoming Myra to the town but in fact spreading and inventing gossip. Cora Gump played by Mary Clarke and Reba Harper played by Annette Snars who both give fine performances and support each other in akin to slapstick roles.

Next Piney the local axe-wielding handyman and skunk trapper drops by. With his wild hair and wilder eyes Jason Spindlow ensures the laughter continues. To complete the list of looney neighbours Sandy Velini, as Wilma Mae Wilcox, enlivens the stage and makes the most of her role as a kind of new age hippie witch.

In an attempt to get rid of them, and gain some privacy, Myra invents a mad, homicidal sister—who is kept locked in an upstairs room, but who occasionally makes her way out to scare off uninvited visitors. However the consequences are not what Myra expects and a comic mess develops involving the local sheriff, played very effectively with laid-back calm by Larry Murphy.

The set by Trevor Chaise provides a very suitable background, and the costumes, Jean Churchward and Annette van Roden, help accentuate the characters of the actors.

With some very witty lines this may have been a bad year for tomatoes but is a good night for comedy and represents an entertaining finish to the Castle Hill Players 2015 season. The show is playing until Saturday 12th December at the Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill. Performance times are Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8.15pm and Sundays at 4.30pm. Bookings – boxoffice@paviliontheatre.org.au.