Production Photography Kevin Malam. Marketing photography Jonathan Constant. Graphic design and video Gilly Fick.

“The Archers, played by The Marx Brothers. Hilariously barking mad.”

25 – 28 MARCH 2026 · THE NOMAD THEATRE, EAST HORSLEY

Cold Comfort Farm, adapted by Paul Doust from the novel by Stella Gibbons and directed by Ian Nichols.

We were delighted to welcome playwright Paul Doust to a performance of his play where he joined the cast and production team on stage.

Cold Comfort Farm

Set in the 1930s in the fictional village of Howling, Sussex, the story follows Flora Poste, a young, sensible, and “slender of ankle” socialite who is recently orphaned. Lacking an inheritance, she decides to visit her distant relatives, the eccentric and doom-laden Starkadders, at their decaying farm. Far from the bucolic pastoral charm of a romantic English idyll, Cold Comfort Farm sits in a dystopian parallel universe where the lark is definitely not ascending. Armed with “The Higher Common Sense,” Flora finds the farm in a state of chaotic misery and determines to “tidy up” her relatives’ lives by forcing them into the 20th century.

They are a crazy bunch:

Aunt Ada Doom: The terrifying matriarch who rules the family from her bedroom, manipulating everyone by claiming she “saw something nasty in the woodshed” as a child.

The beautiful Elfine: who roams the hills writing poetry.

Uncle Amos: A fire-and-brimstone preacher of the “Quivering Brethren” sect who believes there will be “no butter in hell”.

Cousin Judith: Heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness and engrossed in her son Seth, who is lustily obsessed with his own gorgeousness and with dreams of Hollywood.

Not to mention Seth’s brother — despairing Reuben, and Adam Lambsbreath — an elderly farmhand who cleans dishes with a “twig” and is devoted to his four cows: Graceless, Aimless, Feckless, and Pointless.