This is a text-only version of an article first published on Friday, 24 May 2019. Information shown on this page may no longer be current.
Review
From left, Stephen Bathurst,, Emma Ramsden and Chris Matthewman.
IT is seconds into Babs of Bethlehem when we meet the star of the show (literally).
And from there, the laughter does not stop until the very end. Babs (Emma Ramsden) is working flat-out to run her B&B in Bethlehem and when she takes a call telling her a very important person is coming, she really hopes it's Gary Barlow.
So she's really not that impressed when philosophy professors Caspar and his nutty old colleague, Balthazar drop in.
She's even less happy when Ben Shepherd and his smelly wet dog turn up.
But ever dutiful, she welcomes them in. This is the latest offering from the LAMPS Collective, a Christian theatre company based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Chris Matthewman, who formed LAMPS, is hilarious as overly bearded Balthazar, and the father Shepherd.
Stephen Bathurst plays both Casper and Ben Shepherd and his musical abilities and variety of facial expressions (he must spend hours practising in front of the mirror) are extremely entertaining. The hilarity builds up to a serious and moving crescendo of an ending with brilliant acting from Emma Ramsden.
This whole show is slide splittingly hilarious, packed with puns to make you guffaw with laughter and groan in equal measure. It's becoming noted that 2016 has been an unpredictable and worrying year with the likes of Trump and Brexit.
Babs of Bethlehem provides an evening of much-needed escapism and light relief for people of any age.
And children get the chance to play with the puppets at the end of the show.