THE Actors of North Tawton (ANTS) are gearing up for their latest performance next week.

The amateur dramatic group is busy rehearsing for Run for your Wife, a classic farce by Ray Cooney first performed in 1982.

Director John Palmer said the play was very much a play of its time.

He said: 'It was a time when sexual references on the TV or in the theatre were vehemently challenged by moral standards' campaigner Mary Whitehouse, when "coming out" as a gay was a novel and brave thing to do and when the idea of two men 'living together" would attract ridicule.

'Employing the timeless source of humour of illicit relations between men and women as well as society's reluctance to tolerate relationships between men, every phrase Cooney writes either gains a laugh in its own right or is used to set one up at a later period in the play.

'If the audience enjoy the show as much as the cast have in rehearsal, they are in for a cracking evening of entertainment!'

The show, in North Tawton Town Hall, runs from Thursday, April 23 to Saturday, April 25.