YORK company Pick Me Up Theatre are to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Dad’s Army with a stage version featuring some of the evergreen BBC sitcom's most memorable moments.

From September 21 to 29, the John Cooper Studio at 41 Monkgate in York will be transformed into the Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall and filled with all the favourite characters from Jimmy Perry and David Croft's scripts.

Pompous Captain Mainwaring will be played by Mark Hird, whose past Pick Me Up roles include Uncle Fester in The Addams Family, Charles Guiteau in Assassins, Inspector Wormold in Betty Blue Eyes and Colonel Pickering in My Fair Lady.

The role of his charming, “would you mind awfully” second-in-command Sergeant Wilson goes to Rory Mulvihill, who starred as Henry Higgins in Pick Me Up’s My Fair Lady.

Mick Liversidge, who played doddering waiter Alfie in One Man Two Governors, will be Lance Corporal “Don’t Panic!” Jones; Adam Sowter, last seen as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard Of Oz, will play Private “Stupid Boy” Pike and Bill Laverick, from Betty Blue Eyes and The Pitmen, has been cast as Private “We’re Doomed” Frazer.

Andrew Roberts, from Monty Python's Spamalot, Gypsy and My Fair Lady, has the joy of playing black-market spiv Private Walker; Harry Revell will be mild-mannered Private Godfrey and Robert Readman’s cast also features Ian Giles as Chief Warden Hodges, Sandy Nicholson as Mrs Gray and BBC Radio York presenter Neil Foster at the double as the U-Boat Captain and the Vicar.

Martin Rowley, Glynn Mills, Robert King, Adam Price, Noel Stabler, Alexandra Mather, Katie Melia, Rachel Parkinson, Flo Poskitt, Emily Chattle and

Iona Kaye will be in the company too.

Musical director Sam Johnson and singers Emma Dickinson, Kirsty Hughes, Glynn Mills, Adam Price and Natalie Walker will provide live songs to accompany Pick Me Up's re-creation of three classic episodes. In The Deadly Attachment – the one best known for Mainwaring's immortal line "Don’t tell him, Pike!" – the Home Guard platoon are ordered to guard the crew of a captured German U-boat in the episode. In Mum’s Army, Captain Mainwaring allows women to join the platoon and falls for one of the new recruits. In The Godiva Affair, the platoon must rehearse a Morris Dance to perform in a fund-raising carnival parade that will include a ride-past by Lady Godiva.

Pick Me Up's show also will feature The Floral Dance, wherein the platoon rehearses a traditional Cornish dance along with wardens and some of the ladies of Walmington-on-Sea. The original Dad’s Army cast performed this sketch on Christmas Night With The Stars, shown on TV on Christmas Day in 1970, and again at the Royal Variety Performance in 1975 and in the Dad’s Army stage show. "No video of the sketch remains, so this is a rare chance to see a unique piece of Dad’s Army history," says director Readman.

Tickets for Pick Me Up Theatre's Dad's Army 50th Anniversary show are on sale at £16, concessions £14, on 01904 623568 or at pickmeuptheatre.com. Evening performances will start at 7.30pm; Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2.30pm.

Charles Hutchinson