YOU can keep your birthday cakes and party poppers – one family are putting on their own stage production for a special 60th celebration.

The Crow family could have sat round the table wearing party hats eating sausage rolls but instead decided to stage Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.

The show is to mark the birthday of family matriarch and mother-of-seven Joanna Crow. The former nurse and foster carer decided treading the boards was the right way to mark her landmark because of a long-standing desire to play Lady Bracknell.

Almost all of her children will be on stage alongside her while the remainder will be organising, directing and arranging lights and music.

Sonya Vickers, Mrs Crow’s eldest daughter, said her father Tim Crow – headteacher of the River School in Fernhill Heath – was directing the action. “My dad did direct the play before at the Swan Theatre and my mother auditioned for Lady Bracknell but he turned her down,” she said. “It was my mum’s idea and then she galvanised us all to do it,” she said. “But rehearsals have taken some organising because some of us live in London and Leamington Spa and have children.”

More than 300 friends and family – including cousins from the United States and France – will watch the performance at the King’s School theatre today.

Among the company will be Daniel Crow, Sonya’s younger brother who is an actor with the National Theatre, and younger sister Lizzie Crow, who is a DJ for Premier Radio in London.