Mrs Gerrish's Guesthouse

The Ministry of Entertainment presents its sixth show Mrs Gerrish's Guesthouse. Set at the seaside in 1958, true stories and personal experiences form the basis of the show, all laced with popular music of the era.

It is 1958 and the summer season at Weston-Super-Mare is drawing to a close and, although the charabancs have returned most of the lobster-red holidaymakers back to their Midland homes, Mrs Gerrish finds herself able to display the ‘No Vacancies’ sign.

Apart from the residential guests like 97-year-old Mrs. Gimlet, whose relatives were rumoured to have caused the great potato famine of 1845, the short-term visitors to Mrs. Gerrish's Guest House include the suave and debonair Mr. Thomas Terry, the intrepid Hurley family from West Bromwich, who arrive shoe-horned into their motor cycle combination, and the Great Mephysto, star of the Winter Gardens ‘Summertime Jamboree’.

With ‘Mrs. Gerrish's Guesthouse’, the MOEs 4th show, they leave the ration-ridden 40s behind and streak into the stratosphere of 1950s sophistication. Once again, true stories and personal experiences form the basis of the show, tales from front-line holiday-makers and veteran landladies of that Great British institution - the sea side guest house.

The Ministry of Entertainment was formed by two actors, Kate McNab and Joe Hobbs, to produce theatre based on oral histories from the era of the Second World War. They had met in 1997 during Bristol Old Vic?s premier run of Up the Feeder, Down the Mouth which was directed by Andy Hay and written by A.C.H. Smith about Bristol Docks from the stories of the dockers themselves. During the run, Joe and Kate persuaded fellow performer Kit Morgan to be musical director for their new venture.

Radio Bristol ran a series of programmes following the progress of the planned first production, Keep Smiling Through, and many phoned in volunteering their stories and family anecdotes. Joe and Kate set about interviewing housewives, wardens, factory workers, G.I.s and those who were children at the time. ?The Ministry? wanted to reach as many who remembered the days of the Home Front as possible and so touring over three years was widespread over the West of England in a variety of venues, from theatres to village halls and back again to Bristol Old Vic where it sold out in 2002.

By this time Joe Hobbs had been replaced by Ross Harvey who had played Kate?s husband in Up The Feeder and it was time to collect more stories for the second planned production Doodlebugs and Bogeymen which was eventually written by Joe Hobbs and which Kate and Ross started touring in September 2002 with Kit Morgan remaining part of the team.

As one theatre goer put it ‘If it's The Ministry of Entertainment, you know it will be excellent theatre, great humour and lovely music’.