Ground Rules at The Old Laundry

The Old Laundry in Bowness-on-Windermere staged Eric Chappell's play Ground Rules last weekend. We spotted that the play was being performed, when we visited the Old Laundry for the recent Alan Ayckbourn play, and decided to book tickets.

Eric Chappell, who died last year, wrote some of the UK's greatest sitcom hits of the last fifty years, including Rising Damp, Home to Roost and Duty Free. We're both big fans of Rising Damp particularly, so thought that Ground Rules would be good. We weren't wrong.

Ground Rules is a drawing room comedy and was performed by the Crime and Comedy Theatre Company. They were excellent and we chuckled all through the performance.

The premise of the play is that Judith and Gerald, who appear to be the perfect professional couple – he’s a successful businessman, she’s a counsellor - rescue Jo from a very public argument with her boyfriend, Ashley. They take Jo home....but when Ashley follows them, it sets off a chain of events that no-one can control. Flirting and frayed tempers lead to jealousy, confessions and misunderstandings – plus a potato in the exhaust pipe! 

The play explores what relationships mean to different people and what a successful relationship looks like. By the end, nobody’s relationships – or perhaps even partners – will ever be the same again!  

The cast, made up of four actors, was brilliant and got rousing applause from the audience.