Julie-Ann's desperation to get every detail perfect isn't a good sign, neither is Justin's reaction to her suggestion of living chastely apart until their wedding night.

In the meantime, Justin receives a series of phone calls from his mother, Arabella, indicating that she will be both drunk and late.

However, after Julie-Ann leaves in search of a replacement for a missing fork, a bigger problem emerges: a woman falls into Justin's balcony.

She is Paige Petite, who climbed out of the window of the penthouse she lives in, on the run from her violent gangster boyfriend, Rudi, who mistakenly believes she cheated on him.

Julie-Ann leaves in tears, Arabella collapses on the sofa, and the Act closes with Justin cheerfully saying "Soup anyone?"

In spite of Arabella spending the entire dinner unconscious, and Paige and Micky joining the meal and messing up the cutlery arrangement, things have evidently gone well.

Meanwhile, Micky takes the occasional phone call from an angry Rudi, now returning from a boxing match in Birmingham (where all his fighters lost).

In spite of this, Paige rescues Micky when Arabella takes an interest in his boxing career, claiming he was brilliantly successful when in fact he was a dismal failure.

The conversation then moves to Paige's common-sounding voice, and she says it was down to a motorbike accident she had when she was younger – a story that Justin correctly suspects she made up.

[5] The first West End performance was made at the Duchess Theatre on 7 September 2002, featuring the same cast and production team.

[5] In spite of RolePlay being the afterthought of the trilogy, it earned the most praise of the three plays, throughout the original Scarborough run, the tour, and the later West End production.

"[7] Others, however, saw the play as having more depth Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote about the trilogy as a whole: "It shows Ayckbourn moving beyond his familiar terrain of suburban angst to deal with metropolitan madness and moral confusion.".

[8] Jeremy Kingston commended the play for the collision of three different worlds, and scenes where six of the characters remain immobile whilst the seventh speaks.

[9] There were a number of niggling criticisms, including questioning why Julie-Ann did not call the police whilst she had the chance,[8] but none of them bore any weight on the overall verdict of the plays.