IF trading insults and having a good old slanging match is your cup of tea, then the “Deadly Factor” is just the play for you.

Performed over last weekend at Barn Hall, Amersham, it was a mightily entertaining onslaught from a young cast full of vim and vigour.

The “Deadly Factor”, like the X Factor television programme that it parodies, presents “contestants” performing the seven deadly sins—Pride, Covetousness, Sloth, Envy, Lechery, Gluttony and Wrath which the audience then votes on to produce a winner. It is all very unpredictable with the players themselves not being told the ending of the play until two hours before curtain call.

At the start, one character extols,”Celebrity is the new religion”, and from then on (almost) all hell breaks loose with the audience regaled with bitchiness and crassness of monumental proportions.

Spitting venom and clawing each others’ eyes out to compete for a recording contract, you might say that actors are playing roles dear to their little hearts. They certainly produce a rousing and empathetic performance.

The players are members of “Creative Ink for Actors”, a troupe formed by Jan Moran Neil, the Beaconsfield playwright, who wrote and directed the piece. She has written and directed a string of fine plays , all well reviewed, and runs adult writing classes at the Fitzwilliam Centre in Beaconsfield.

To a man, and woman, the troupe performed superbly well, individually embodying one deadly sin each in a sickening attempt to garner support for their monstrous egos. Particularly vile were Pride (Adrian Baker), Envy (Jennifer Neil) and Covertousness (Jessica Pask) though all players were deliciously disgusting.

The direction was tight and controlled and the set was all the better for being raised slightly above audience level.

Several members of the young cast lost parents to cancer in the past twelve months so they decided to donate all proceeds to Cancer Research, a very worthy cause for actors behaving badly. By John Moore