Hard to believe Paul Nicholas is heading toward sixty. He still looks the blond blue eyed charmer familiar from his role as Vince in the BBC comedy series "Just Good Friends".

Women have always loved his boyish good looks and his non-threatening characters, well here he really gets in touch with his feminine side.

Just suspend belief and accept that he disappears from his family for six months and comes back as a woman.

A trip to Casablanca and a few hours under the surgeon’s knife and he is reborn as Verna.

Seems a bit extreme especially when he explains that he has always wanted to be a woman...to wear women’s clothes and have men open doors for him/her. Sorry but there is a bit more to being a woman than that!

Takes more than a frock and lipstick darling!

Sarah McCardie and Paul Nicholas

The script tries to explain the difference between a transvestite and a transsexual but goes on to show Verna as only concerned with the superficialities of clothes and hair.

He/she is NOT gay, yet the play opens with music by Marc Almond and Freddie Mercury - two of the gayest icons I can think of!

Nicholas wears male clothes for the first half and beautifully captures certain gestures and postures in a truly feminine way, but donning the wig and skirt for the second half turned this into a ridiculous farce.

Some of his lines are very funny though and his description of the sex change surgery as "turning the sock outside in" did make me chuckle.

Mary Tamm as Jan the long suffering wife held this production together and for me and gave the best performance.

She also gets to voice the lines that Verna is not a real woman as she has never had periods! But Jan too has a bit of a secret...can you guess what it is yet?

John Benfield and Carol Holt

John Benfield as the golf obsessed Eddie with his musical underpants rose to the occasion!

The musical pants form a running gag through the play, indicating Eddie’s state of arousal...also indicating that most of the script’s humour is locked in a time warp from the sixties!

I would also be intrigued to see if the "corpsing" on stage is a regular occurrence for John...as it seemed to get the biggest laugh of the night. Could be a case of - if it gets a laugh keep it in.

The best entrance belonged to Karen rather than Verna. Carol Holt as Eddie’s wife was a stunner and every inch the woman in her figure revealing red dress and matching stilettos. Verna should go shopping with her.

The humour in Mixed Feelings is banal and rather smutty but I seriously worried when Fletcher, Vernon and Eddie’s boss, started his rant about new accountant Kominsky not only being Jewish, but worse, being a woman!

The name itself is an indicator of the level of the jokes.

However, the audience tittered and laughed and seemed to find it all so amusing. Me - maybe I’m just a grumpy, old and hormonally-afflicted woman!

Mixed Feelings
Theatre Royal, Plymouth
Tue 1st June - Sat 5th June (7.30pm plus Thur & Sat matinee 2.30pm)
Tickets: £9 - £18
Box Office: 01752 267222