Funtington Players stage Mike Harding's The Last Tango In Whitby

“I enjoy directing very much. For me it is good fun. It is a lot more work than acting because you've got to think of everything rather than just your own character and whether you've learnt your own lines. But we've got a very jolly bunch of people who all get on together and that is so important. If the cast aren't working as a team, then I think you can feel that as an audience but we are so lucky here that everyone gets on so well.”

Filled with tuneful toe-tapping melodies, the piece tells of a group of lifelong friends who set off for their annual week’s holiday in Whitby. They're looking forward to fancy dress and talent competitions and bingo but most of all lots of dancing – the Gay Gordons, waltzes, line dancing and of course the tango. But things are a little different this year and things will never be the same again for one of the friends.

Performances take place from April 8-12 at the Village Hall in West Ashling, with tickets available from funtingtonplayers.org.uk.

Gillian said: “I was in it ages ago. The Players do a monthly play-reading and I just said to everyone why don't we do this. We read it and everybody enjoyed it and they prevailed on me to direct. It is about, I suppose, people of our parents’ age, people born in the late 20s who went through the war and who are now just about retiring and looking for other things that they might do. In some ways it is very much of its era, and if it was on TV now there would be a warning about how some of the language and views are of that time, but there is nothing that anyone should take offence about. It is just that it is certainly not woke! But it's light-hearted and it's fun.

“It's about a group of friends that have known each other since they started school, and like lots of friends, I suppose if they had met when they were 40, they would not have become friends. But they met when they were five, they were at school together and they worked together and their lives have just become entwined over the years. They get on and they tolerate each other's strengths and weaknesses!

“But they go on holiday for the same week every year to the same hotel in Whitby where they do lots of old-time dancing. They play bingo and they walk around the town just as they’ve done every year for donkey years. But this year one particular woman's husband has died but she decides that she is going to go anyway because that's what she has always done...”