Long before Ruth Jones lifted the lid on Welsh eccentricity with Nessa, Uncle Bryn and the unforgettable Doris, the go-to playwright for weird and Welsh was the late, great Frank Vickery, who over the course of a long career managed, perhaps like no other, to capture the humour of the valleys where he made his home.

Drawing heavily on the characters he saw every day, he encapsulated the community in which he lived, recreating the idiom and rhythm of the language and its distinctive delivery. Setting his work firmly in the world he inhabited, he created some great plays.

Sadly, for me Granny Annie is not one of his better creations, relying on a flimsy premise, which although not unusual for Vickery, is further frustrated by a cast of unmemorable characters and plot which hasn’t really passed the test of time.

Yes there is the loveable drunk, the lonely bachelor and the flirtatious love interest, but where Granny Annie fails is that it centres almost entirely on the leading character of Teddy which was created to be played by the writer and director himself.

Again, this is not unusual, but where it does differ from the norm is that Teddy in a rare selfish moment for Vickery, gets the best lines and the best comedy artifices as the rest of the action circles around him.

It was this perhaps which was the biggest drawback to Abergavenny Theatre Group’s production of the backstage comedy, which played at the town’s Borough Theatre last week with am-dram stalwart Andrew Fowler who gave his all taking on the mantle of Vickery as both lead actor and director.

While he camped it up to the nth degree donning an ever more extravagant series of costumes before submitting to full drag for the final scene, it was left to the rest of the cast to circle around him trying to keep the action moving.

There was good support from Janine Davies as the increasingly bizarre Joyce, doomed to forever adore Teddy from a distance while swigging from various bottles stashed around the ‘dressing room’ and toting her late father’s ashes in her handbag.

Richard Griffiths also worked hard as Colin with a great performance from Laura Iwanski as Rose and Andrea Marfell making her Theatre Group comedy debut as Liz, the diminutive cast member press-ganged into taking the role of Annie when both lead and understudy are struck down by illness.

Duane Edwards and Falesha Lewis also worked hard as Hayden and Babs, with some lovely off the ball playing by the ever present Christine Harling as theatre cleaner Vi.

Despite their hard work, which sadly often strayed into over-acting, this was a production which didn’t really live up to its promise, lacked the attention to detail which could have raised it up a notch and without a doubt should have ended on its albeit predictable climax and well before its bizarre finale which left the audience frankly baffled.