The beauty of putting Keeping Up Appearances on the stage is that it needs little introduction. It is also the downside, says Therese Bean, who plays leading lady Hyacinth Bucket. She believes most of the audience at tomorrow night’s sold-out opening at Daylesford Theatre will be familiar with the British sitcom it is based on. Keeping Up Appearances ran on BBC One from 1990 to 1995, ultimately becoming popular with television viewers in North America, Australia and Europe.“It’s a challenge to play and, because it’s so well known, we’ve got to get it right,” said Ms Bean, an Australian who moved here nearly three years ago to teach drama at Saltus Grammar School.“I hadn’t seen the TV series before, but my mum and dad loved the show. They were huge fans and are really excited I’m in it. It’s so well known.”Keeping Up With Appearances is centred on her character, Hyacinth, “an overbearing, social-climbing snob, originally from a lower-class background”, who pronounces her surname “Boo-kay”.According to the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society synopsis: “Her attempts are constantly hampered by her lower-class dysfunctional family, sisters Rose and Daisy and slobbish brother-in-law Onslow, from whom she is desperate to hide.“Hyacinth’s passion for flawless entertaining unnerves her neighbour, Liz, who is often invited to the Bucket home for coffee.“Liz’s divorced brother Emmet, who also lives next door to the Buckets, tries to avoid Hyacinth because she breaks into song in his presence in the hope he’ll cast her in one of his little theatre musical productions.”Ms Bean said she thought the role would appeal to her strengths as an actor.“I tend to play smaller roles because I’m a character actress,” she said. “I play murderers, crazy people — the more interesting roles. In Keeping Up Appearances, it just so happens that the main character is that unusual character.” A veteran actor, she was teaching her craft in Sydney when she decided she “needed a change”.She added: “I grew up in the Northern Territory with beaches, a tropical world [and] I was a big fan of Death in Paradise [the Anglo-French crime drama filmed in Guadeloupe] and said I wanted to live somewhere like that.“I Googled ‘drama teacher vacancies’ and ‘island’ for three years,” she laughed. “A position came up in the Cayman Islands, but the teacher stayed, and then this one came up at Saltus.”She has encouraged her students to come out and watch her on stage, insisting she is proof that the phrase “those who can’t do, teach” isn’t correct. “I’ve been acting for 20 years,” she said. “I think they learn more from seeing me demonstrating craft and sharing passion I have for it. I love kids and instilling that passion in the next generation.”Geoff Faiella, Charlotte Morrell, Neil Joynson, Christine Whitestone, Tracey Beach, Shawn Angiers, John Ross and Barbara Jones are all part of “the excellent cast” selected by Keeping Up Appearances’ director, Nicola Flood.“The challenge is to replicate it well enough so that people buy into the script whilst still keeping it ‘original’ to my cast members,” she said. “One of the things I always say to my actors is to not play the actor playing the character, but to bring yourself to the character.“That way, the audience will stop looking for the TV version of the character and enjoy your version of him/her.”She had never acted before when she decided, about 16 years ago, to audition for a role in BMDS’s annual Famous for Fifteen Minutes playwright competition.She then further challenged herself by taking over the director’s chair, and found she “really enjoyed it”.That experience led to a string of plays based on British sitcoms: Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers, ‘Allo ‘Allo and Yes, Prime Minister.“I’m very fascinated by the Second World War,” she said. “My grandfather served and it’s something close to my heart. The play was such a huge success and I loved the people I worked with.“It was a total sell-out. We had to put on three extra nights and they sold out in two hours.“By Fawlty Towers, I had cemented myself in BMDS membership as a director who would do quintessential British shows.”She considered Are You Being Served? for this production, but the set demands kiboshed that idea.“It started in a department store and went from there to a vacation in Malta. I thought, I don’t know how we could do that on the tiny stage we have, so I chose Keeping Up With Appearances.”• Keeping Up Appearances opens tomorrow night at 8pm at Daylesford Theatre and runs through Saturday. The show continues February 27 to 29. Tickets are available at ptix.bm and at the theatre box office one hour before the show. For more information, call 292-0848