It’s good news, the Stratford based playwright Ian Harris (although I see he now credits himself as Ian F. Harris), an old and dear friend, is back and directing his first new play in years.

Ian and I co-founded, with Reg Mitchell, The Bird of Prey Theatre Company in 1997, an event which was a spirited roller-coaster affair that, once up and running, produced some superb plays, most especially Ian’s The Big K, which is a dark comedy about the last days of a faded 1930s Hollywood star awaiting execution in a California prison for murdering a Hollywood mogul.

Not a natural subject for laughter you might think (awaiting execution that is, not the murder of a Hollywood mogul), but in Ian’s devious and creative writing hands the play was one of the funniest, and poignant, pieces of theatre I’ve ever experienced.

The show starred David Troughton’s wife, Ali Troughton, as Irma Kaskade, with Tim Guest as Jack Rock, an aspiring - and extremely naïve - newspaperman who gets to interview her. Throughout the interviews Ian manages to tell not only the stories of Irma’s and Jack’s lives (and a history of 1930s - 40s Hollywood), but also builds a developing relationship between Irma and Jack which, at a heart-rending moment, is cut short by the 20,000 volts of the electric chair. For Irma it was not a good hair day. It’s a play I want to see again. It’s a play you should all get a chance to see.

Ian’s new play, Rhonna’s Tears, is another two-hander, and we again encounter a woman facing death, not this time by frying in the electric chair, but by suicide, which is another subject that might be thought lacking in humour unless its gone through the grinding and finishing departments of Ian’s emotion and laughter factory, a process that makes us look at our ridiculous self-centred selves and, well, laugh.

And, as with The Big K, Rhonna, as she contemplates the past, present and future from the vantage point of a roof from which she intends to make a final dive, will also, like Irma (who might have preferred an electrician to a newspaperman), be visited by a naïve young man - again played by Tim Guest - who tries to change Rhonna’s mind about jumping. Of course, he might just end up jumping himself.

What you will get with this play, with all of Ian’s plays, is lots of lovely words strung together in an hilarious exchange of fast moving, and very moving dialogue.

Rhonna is played by Jen Franey, a much respected Stratford actress who, as Rhonna, has taken on a massive part that only comes around once in a lifetime. And knowing Tim’s work well (I directed him in my play Ancient Pinnacles) there is no doubt the sparks are going to fly!

Rhonna’s Tears will be staged at The Shakespearience in Stratford from the 2nd to the 4th of November 2006. Don’t miss it. I can’ t wait to see it and shall write a full review next week.

To buy tickets click here.