Upstage Theatre Company put on their second play of the year at the cornerHOUSE this week. GRAHAM MOODY spoke to Peter Cooke, who plays the slightly mad Colonel Snipes, all about Tim Kelly's horror farce Curse of the Werewolf.

Graham Moody: So what's Curse of the Werewolf all about then?

Peter Cooke: It's a horror comedy spoof that is quite fun and suitable for all the family. A guy has transported his spooky castle from Scotland to Massachusetts and has a collection of odd relatives with him. A circus entertainer then turns up to claim his fortune as the heir of Gargoyle House as does a lawyer who is an impostor. It is a whodunit as people start dying and an American sheriff turns up who is trying to work out who killed Algernon Snipes. There's quite a big twist at the end too when you find out who the real heir is.

GM: How have the rehearsals been going?

PC: They've been going well. I play Colonel Snipes who's a mad commando stuck in a time warp. He still thinks he is in the army but retired some time ago.

GM: Has the group done Tim Kelly plays before?

PC: We have done two of his, Dark and Stormy Night, which was directed by Chris Smith who is also directing Curse of The Werewolf, and Hide and Shriek. He is a writer we like because he produces plays that have the right amount of characters for us. We have 15 or so members and everybody wants to be in the plays we do and we are also women heavy, we have only five men. So we have to find plays that match the genders in our group and Kelly tends to do a lot of these. We like the plays too as their funny and audiences tend to enjoy them as well.

GM: Tell me a bit about the company.

PC: The last play we did was Celebration in April and we have been going for about 15 years. We are self-funding so we all put money in to keep it running and that is boosted by ticket sales. We came together through a night school class we were doing in North Kingston and just thought why pay to go to a class when we could just form a company ourselves? We started in the Dream Theatre in New Malden but they decided they were going to stop hiring it out to other companies so we came to the cornerHOUSE. They support us by coming to our shows and we support them by going to theirs.

Curse of the Werewolf, the cornerHOUSE, Douglas Road, Surbiton, October 13 to 16, 8pm, £8. Call 020 8390 0334 or visit thecornerhouse.org.