THE Colwall Players will forget their lines, miss their cues and descend into chaos with their latest production.

The company, performing as the Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Guild Dramatic Society, present – deep breath – The Haunted Through Lounge And Recessed Dining Nook At Farndale Castle at Colwall Village Hall, near Malvern, later this month.

The Farndale Society, created by David McGillivray and Walter Zerlin Jr, is a comically incapable amateur theatre company who, despite their total inability to perform anything well, have attempted to stage Shakespeare and Dickens. In Haunted..., the fictional company turn their hand to murder mystery.

Performing such a play-within-aplay is no mean feat, according to players director Adrian Mealing, who seems to relish the challenge.

“If you do bad badly, it stinks,”

he said.

“If you do bad well, it will make people weep with laughter.

“It’s difficult because you have to get under the skin of the Farndale ladies. When the cast are performing as the ghosts of Farndale Castle, they have to remember they are the Farndale ladies playing ghosts, not just playing ghosts.”

In this play, Farndale’s most tragic actresses and their harassed producer create a complete spectacle of themselves, and manage to embarrass a different member of the audience every night, as they perform their spooky tale of a haunted castle.

It brings back memories of watching Farndale’s creator David McGillivray perform live, Mealing said. “I once saw him play 15 furious parts in a one-man show that he’d written,” said Mealing.

“This was well before Farndale.

It was in a damp Edinburgh cellar and it was revolutionary stuff to us Fringe fans. I’ve been a convert ever since to comic theatre that subverts and mickey-takes. He hung his coat on a non-existent hook, he got his costumes tangled, he blew lines and he survived. Just masterful.” The Haunted... runs from Thursday, October 30, to Saturday, November 1. For tickets, priced £7, from John Goodwin Estate Agency call 01684 540300.