Accent is on laughter as Gainford goes transatlantic (Darlington & Stockton Times)

Members of the audience were reduced to helpless laughter on Tuesday by Gainford Drama Club”s slick new production, Plaza Suite.

Three short plays by American author Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple) make up the show, as new sets of characters check in and out of suite number 719 of the Plaza Hotel, New York.

The hilarious third act opens with a bride locked in the bathroom, arid follows the increasingly desperate (and funny) efforts of her parents to persuade her to come out and take part in her £28,000 wedding.

Joan While and John Robinson are excellent as the parents: he very tall, stooping and hapless; she increasingly disheveled and wailing.

Half an hour later the pair of them looked like survivors from the Blitz, the audience was in hysterics and the whole thing reminiscent of a vintage episode of FawIty Towers.

The first two acts, despite some great comic lines, were not quite this funny, containing a fair helping of poignance.

In the first, housewife Karen Nash (Rosemary Thompson) confronts her vain, dull husband (Michael Sillars) who is having an affair with his secretary.

She wins the sympathy of the audience with a feisty performance and the best lines: “You were working three nights a week — but we weren”t getting any richer” and “Everyone cheats with their secretary — I expected more from MY husband.”

The second piece saw a louche, disillusioned big-time film producer, well captured by David Simpson, attempt to seduce a childhood sweetheart, the suburban housewife Muriel Tate (Vivienne Harrison) with vodka stingers and Hollywood tales.

All of the cast members are to be congratulated on their American accents, which (unusually) stayed in place throughout.

I”m just sorry we didn”t see more of David Blackie, who turned in a nice cameo as a crazy waiter.

The set was fabulous, with commendable attention to detail, from a Tiffany carrier bag to the fresh flowers in each scene. The show, highly recommended, was produced by Mrs Joan Robinson.