When The Lights Go Again – Sutton Village Hall Sutton’s Green Hut Theatre Company found a way of counteracting the misery of last year’s centenary of the outbreak of the First World War by celebrating the imminent 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

And well done it was too.

The play was set in 1939, nicely felt with The White Cliffs Of Dover, after wh ich we were introduced to the seven-strong Parker family, whose actors gained in confidence as the evening progressed.

Parted members of the family wrote letters to each other, some squabbling in shopping queues at home with their precious ration books.

There was a half-term school concert, where the two youngest loved singing There’ll Always Be An England, and the others never missed the Saturday night dance which, When a Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square, started to warm up the sparse-audience who were seated uncomfortably at street party tables.

At the dance there was also an excellent Andrews Sisters’ Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree.

Time for Act Two – dancers and chorus enjoying themselves with three wartime favourites before Ray Waters’s stentorian Sgt Major welcomed us to a camp concert in 1944.

The concert included the Little Darlings of H Wing and the Morons of C Company, with the kilted soldier on the end loving every minute, including Kiss Me Goodnight Sgt Major!

The local cinema was next on the list, if the villagers could outwit the unhelpful commissionaire, and they told us what kept them (and us ) happy through the war – King Kong, The Wizard Of Oz, Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, all against the gossiping neighbours of the garden fence.

As the full company finally sang, the lights went on again, and we all waved flags wildly.

John Pettitt