Wife After Death — it’s the perfect title for a fabulous play written by the award-winning writer of the situation comedies we’ve all loved – Rising Damp, Only When I Laugh, Duty Free…

Eric Chappell is one of Britain’s top comedy writers, and Wife After Death by Cowes Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society (CAODS) certainly kept the audience at the wonderful Trinity Theatre in Cowes laughing and guessing.

The focus is on Dave, a well-known and loved comedian, lying dead in his coffin in the front room of his home.

His scriptwriter and friend Harvey, played by Kevin Wilson, so good at the delivery of the funny lines, can hardly bear to look into the open coffin, though Harvey’s wife Vi, excellently played by Carolyn Ferguson, doesn’t find it a problem.

Dave’s agent Kevin (the enthusiastic Martin Croutear) is in floods of tears — well, he is losing his best money-making client!

But he has no idea about the secrets that will emerge from the stationery cupboard once his own wife, played by the excellent Nessa Law, starts talking.

And Dave’s wife, the gifted and glamorous Rebecca Lennon, is full of grand ideas about her dead husband. She’s done up in a very fashionable black veil, and high black heels, and she’s booked black horses, and all sorts of funeral extras, and she’s absolutely loving all the attention.

And think of it! She will inherit three houses!

There are many friends and admirers outside by the waiting horse-drawn hearse, including one infiltrator no-one knows. Just who will Kay, cleverly played by Sarah Kellett, turn out to be?

This funeral, and the subsequent celebrations, are moments of truth when Dave’s real life will emerge.

We witness one relationship after another unravelling around him in the house before the funeral, and three weeks later when he’s in an urn, and all these characters arrive for his ashes to be scattered on the front lawn. More intrigue.

And who is Kay? Every story development is surprising, and those ashes will be spread alright.

It was such a pleasure to watch such excellent acting, such good stage direction by Dinah Bowman, and experience such delightfully funny and classy writing in such a comfortable local theatre.

Trinity Theatre is a jewel in the Cowes crown, and staffed by enthusiastic volunteers.