OVINGHAM Drama Group’s latest offering was two, one act plays.

The first was Costa del Packet, a comedy which can best be described as an old idea very well executed.

Four ladies, who belong to a sort of club, always have an annual holiday together without their husbands.

The play opens with the group, led by female tour guide Hump, arriving at their hotel – except it doesn’t exist.

Their accommodation is a workman’s hut, the toilet a tin shed without a door and nothing to sit upon, their beds, lilos that need to be blown up and patched … you get the general idea.

Everything that can go wrong does so.

The women are trapped, for how can they go home when they’ll be mocked forever when their husbands hear that their holiday was not spent in a luxurious hotel on the Playa del Sol, but in a hut?

Of course, their biggest worry is “what will the WI think?”

Directed with panache by Sue Douglas, the cast of Lorraine White, Jeanette Hunter, Ann Ingham, Liz Lake and Brenda Parker threw themselves into the play with gusto, making every laugh-filled line count.

The second offering was another comedy, Hidden Meanings.

Here, we have two gentlemen carrying out their usual Friday night activity of playing at being Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.

Malcolm Lowerson as Holmes/Rodney Carson held the whole thing together with aplomb.

Tony Overton as Dr Watson/George gave a virtuoso performance of comic timing and there was never a more poignant cry than his, “you never let me play Holmes”.

The plot focuses on accountant Charles Meaning embezzling from Rodney’s company, while Rodney believes he has been stealing from his own company himself.

Charles turns up at Rodney’s house before George appears and Rodney convinces him to play the part of Moriarty, Holmes’ arch enemy.

They re-enact the pair’s struggle and Rodney/Sherlock shoots him, thinking Charles has come to accuse him of embezzlement.

At this stage the audience is not aware that Charles has really been shot.

What follows is a hilarious display of one woman after another explaining what Charles was really like.

Let’s just say that “old Charles” had four lovers, was planning to run away with one of them and had got the youngest one pregnant.

From the beginning, when Mrs Hudson, played superbly by Rosemary Cook, staggers in with a tray full of tea and scones and almost pitches the whole lot into the front row, the play, assuredly directed by Bill Clegg, never lets up with its twists and turns and laughs.

Charles’ wife, Moira, played convincingly by Brenda Parker, is more concerned about whether her husband has changed his underwear than the fact his body is completely soaked with blood.

Equally convincing in his role as Inspector Jobling, Ian Dixon raised gales of laughter with, “What you get up to in the privacy of your own home is entirely up to you, sir,” as Rodney insists on continuing to pretend he is Sherlock Holmes.

Jenny Littlechild, as Rodney’s put-upon wife Sylvia, Lorraine White, as Charles’ secretary Glenda, and Sue Douglas, as Deidre, Mrs Hudson’s pregnant daughter, completed the excellent work performed by the whole cast.

Finally, I must mention Alan Littlechild, who gave a whole new meaning to playing the role of a dead body for most of the play by coming briefly back to life at the very end.