A Bedful of Foreigners' by Dave Freeman, was Lucilla's November 2004 Production at Crosby Civic Hall.  The play is a farce, set in a French hotel in a small village near the German border. The hotel is run á la Fawlty Towers, and the action takes place on the eve of a local Saint's Festival. There are all the ingredients associated with fast moving farce: mistaken identities, a double-booked bedroom, inefficient staff and hasty cover-ups. Seductions and confrontations run rampant throughout this hilarious play, which provided an excellent evening’s entertainment!

Mike Quirke (Stanley, husband of Brenda) would prefer to holiday in Skegness, but after being alone with Simone becomes Skegless? In his first major production since On Golden Pond Mike is well known for his rather nastier characters in Sound of Murder, Arsenic & Old Lace and Gaslight, to name but a few! Mike won the Best Actor Award for a fourth time in the 39^th Lucilla Festival this year in the play Departure.

Val Broom (Brenda) has appeared in many Lucilla plays over the years in parts ranging from 12-year-olds to 75-year-olds. Some years ago she received an award for Best Actress in an All England Festival while playing a deranged wife --- she says that times haven’t changed!

John Wild (Heinz) writes: ‘Normally when I appear on the Lucilla stage, death is not far behind! In my debut appearance in 1985 in Abigail's Party I had a heart attack as I did in my last appearance a few months ago in Recipe for Murder. In Suddenly at Home I murdered my (stage) wife by suffocating her and in Ayckbourn's It could have been any one of us it was me! Dramatic and exciting as these parts have been I have to confess that the part I enjoyed the most was in Off the Hook when I played a gormless crook with a Lancashire accent - the accent was genuine: the gormlessness was a theatrical tour de force! So when I was offered the part of Heinz in this hilarious play how could I refuse? We are having great fun rehearsing it: I hope you do watching it’.

David Sumner (Claude, husband of Helga) has been acting for more years than he cares to remember, during the course of which he has won awards for both Best Actor and Best Character Actor. He enjoys playing both comic and serious roles and is looking forward to playing Claude, the pompous businessman in Bedful of Foreigners.

Gordon Craig (Karak) has appeared in more than 100 full-length plays. Early plays included in the cast Leonard Rossiter and Rita Tushingham. Gordon has won awards for Best Actor and Best Character Actor. Since retiring he has done supporting actor work in films (Hilary & Jackie, Al’s Lads) and TV, his latest assignment was doubling for Eric Sykes. Last seen on stage for Lucilla wearing a Harley-Davidson outfit in You’re Only Young Twice.

Margaret McDowell plays Simone, a French cabaret dancer with a saucy sense of humour; she is mistress to …. Well that would give the game away! Margaret appeared in this years Lucilla Festival where she won the Best Character Actor award for her portrayal of Rosemary in Departures, receiving special mention from the Adjudicator, who described her performance as having ‘excellent comic timing’. Margaret says ‘I love to entertain people and the best reward is peoples laughter’.

 A Bedful of Foreigners is Kate Sumner’s ninth full-length production, and she has directed many One-Act Plays, several of which have won awards in the Lucilla One-Act Play Festival. Kate says that directing farce is a serious business although you wouldn’t think so if you heard the laughter at rehearsals! After 2½ hours of intense concentration rehearsing three nights a week, then driving home to Aughton, often in bad weather, Kate sometimes has to convince herself that she’s doing this for fun!

Moira Weston (playing Helga) first appeared on the stage in a Lucilla production of Anne Frank, in the title role, when she was 15 years old. She worked alongside her stage husband Claude, played by David Sumner. She then worked professionally in the theatre in London for over 10 years before returning to Liverpool to marry. She gave up acting for a while, but the lure of the grease paint and the Lucilla called her back!