The Legion Players have kicked off their 90th anniversary celebrations with the comedy A Bunch of Amateurs.

They performed the play, written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, from Thursday to Saturday last week at Peel Centenary Centre.

Simon Fletcher played the role of fading action hero Jefferson Steele, who arrives in England to play King Lear in Stratford .

But he soon finds out this is not the birthplace of the Bard, but a sleepy Suffolk village.

And instead of Kenneth Branagh and Dame Judi Dench, the cast are a bunch of amateurs trying to save their theatre from developers.

The cast also featured Alex Batey as Jefferson’s daughter Jessica Steele, Howard Caine as the starstruck handyman Dennis Dobbins, Gill Buchanan as Jefferson Steele fan and B&B owner Mary Plunkett, Chris Caine as the pompous solicitor and leading light of the Stratford Players Nigel Dewbury, Katryn Cawte as marketing executive and sponsor’s wife Lauren Bell and Stephanie Gray as Stratford Players’ director Dorothy Nettle.

The play was directed and produced by Sonia Callin.

It included some original music by Ellie Quayle. She put to music the Shakespearean rhymes used to close the scenes.

The group was formed after the First World War, when returning soldiers wanted to raise funds for their injured comrades. They performed R.C. Sheriff’s Journey’s End to a packed audience over three nights at the Gaiety Theatre in 1932.

From there The Legion Players was formed.

A film version was shot in the island in 2008.