THIS brilliantly funny show went down a storm - despite the company having to replace its star, Brian Glover, due to his sudden illness.

He was discovered to be suffering from a brain tumour shortly before the tour began, so Christopher Timothy, from TV's All Creature's Great and Small, stepped into his role at only a fortnight's notice.

And if Mr Timothy was unsure of his words or confused by the seven or eight character changes required for the part of the stage carpenter, he certainly didn't show it. The show, which ran at Preston's Charter Theatre until Saturday, was about a theatre troupe putting on an atrociously over-acted performance of The Three Musketeers to mark the 150th anniversary of Alexandre Dumas' death.

It begins when we learn half the cast has gone missing in Wakefield, and rom that point on everything descends into chaos, with the stage carpenter being forced to act the missing parts.

The result is an hilarious string of disasters, including the queen being played by a man in drag and the king by a blow up doll.

Witty performances came from Brookside actress Susan Twist who was the witch-like Milady De Winter and Knight Mantell, who was the slimy, murderous Cardinal Richlieu.

The plot was quite hard to follow, but luckily I sat in front of a woman explaining it all to her small child so I didn't miss out.

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