Not Now Darling

by Ray Cooney and John Chapman

performed by BTG May 1979

A Farce

The play is set in the elegant fur salon of Bodley, Bodley & Crouch. Gilbert Bodley, a flamboyant extrovert, is scheming to seduce a beautiful stripper, Janie with the aid of a £5,000 mink. Unfortunately, she is married and her husband, Harry, would notice such an acquisition. So Gilbert reduces the mink to £500 and Janie tries to get Harry to buy the coat for her, Gilbert paying the difference. Harry realizes a bargain when he sees one and buys it instead for his own curvaceous little secretary, Sue. Gilbert is quite demented by this turn of events and both he and his dithering assistant, Arnold Crouch, are further embarrassed when Janie strips and refuses to leave the salon without the mink. Their frenzied attempts to retrieve the coat from Sue and hide the naked Janie are further complicated by the unexpected arrival of Gilbert's wife, Maud. Meanwhile, Arnold's method of hiding any discarded ladies underwear is to throw them out of the window and it is left to Miss Tipdale, the firm's spinster secretary, to retrieve the garments and the situation whenever necessary. The hilarious permutations reach a point of hysteria before everyone gets their just desserts.