“BE careful what you wish for!”

This could be a suitable sub-title for John Godber’s feisty black comedy, Lucky Sods, which kicks off the 2011/12 season for Knutsford Little Theatre.

The play was first produced in the mid-90s by the Hull Truck Theatre Company soon after the launch of the National Lottery. Sometime after its debut, John Godber reportedly made the comment, “It strikes me that lottery fever has become lottery flu!”

Morris, a security guard, believes that bad luck always follows good and, when he and his wife Jean win £2 million on the National Lottery, he fears things will only get worse.

Indeed the winners, after initial euphoria, experience everything a cynic would expect – greedy and resentful relatives and friends crawling out of the woodwork, extravagant trips to the USA, an oversized conservatory, begging letters, so-called Christmas cheer made worse not better by the money.

Even the local vicar gets in on the act. So, do the trappings of wealth really equate with happiness? What are the truly important things in life?

Eight actors make up the cast of this wonderfully northern play.

Three of them, Zoe Garner, Melanie Shaw and Christine Barton made their debut at the theatre in last season’s Playfest.

Fortunately they decided they liked it so much that they came back for more – much to the delight of director Tina Buckley as they put in sterling performances as Jean, Annie and Molly respectively.

Jean is the ecstatic winner, Annie the jealous sister and Molly the foul- mouthed, battleaxe mother of Morris.

The delightful Riyaz Assrafally, on the other hand, is diving in at the deep end in his first role at the theatre playing Annie’s husband, Norman.

The remaining four in the cast are Bob Jennings as Morris, Ali Hulford as his ex-lover, Jack Coggin, a waiter and Mike Wilding, the vicar, a role Mike seems destined to play more than once.

So, a cracking start for the new season, technically and theatrically well up to the standard regular patrons have come to expect.

As in so many of John Godber’s plays there is much food for thought: laughter in bucketfuls, but underlying this are tensions and tragedies which gradually become apparent.

So be prepared to chuckle, but maybe you should bring a hanky or two and, as one might expect of the playwright, there is copious but mild swearing throughout.

The play runs from Thursday, August, 31, to Saturday, September 3. Tickets are £7, available from 01565 873515.