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 No chronology of the BATS would be complete without a few pictures of this rather quaint cold-war piece (written 1957) by Peter Ustinov and directed by Denis Brooke at a time when Glasnost and Perestroika were just entering the English vocabulary.
The set itself - constructed as always in those days by Gordon Green - was really quite the star and as for the cast, well we did the best we could with the lack-lustre script and improbable plot, but heck, that's comedy for you, and I enjoyed singing my balcony serenade, complete with a bizarre smock and Wurzel Gummidge straw hat.
As the first soldier I had to try to extract comic tension from wooden lines like: "You live in the past general. Our future lies in the abolition of frontiers. The day will dawn when the workers will tear down the customs sheds, demolish the road blocks, and extend the hand of friendship across the artificial gulfs imposed by nationalists and capitalist war mongers".
Try getting a laugh out of that!
All photos supplied by Rob Kay
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