WHEN it comes to creating a play about a bunch of old biddies, who better to do it than an old codger?

Don’t worry. Those politically incorrect terms are Don Reid’s, not mine.

Reid is the enormously successful playwright who brought us “Codgers”, the touring favourite in 2010 that was set in a men’s gym.

He has just opened his companion piece, “Biddies”, at the Glen Street Theatre in Sydney and we’ll see it both at The Street Theatre and The Q this year, a sign that audiences love seeing themselves on stage. The all-star cast includes, Maggie Blinco, Annie Byron, Vivienne Garrett, Julie Hudspeth and Linden Wilkinson.

Reid tells “CityNews” that the seed was planted by friends during the run of “Codgers”, though at first he thought “it’s really a bit daring for a man to write a play that explores the feminine psyche – something cheeky”. He found the strength to do it, though, because of “my unbridled admiration for females”.

Luckily, just as the seed was germinating, he remembered “a great story” told by his old friend, the actress Judy Ferris, about how she and her classmates from her old school, Frensham in the Southern Highlands, had got together to embroider new “kneelers” for school prayers.

“My old girls could be from any school, but I wanted it to have an English flavour, so I invented the name ‘Inglehurst’. My biddies meet back at school to complete the cushions, so yes, I pinched the idea from Judy Ferris,” he says.

In writing Codgers, Reid decided the central idea in “Biddies” would be the relationship of the biddies with the men in their lives. All offstage men.

Reid has enormous confidence in the director, Wayne Harrison, former long-time director of the Sydney Theatre Company and an old friend, who also directed “Codgers”.

A teacher, an actor and a director at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, he says, “I’ve always been a scribbler and the computer’s made a great difference.”

With a play about poet John Shaw Neilson, navigator Matthew Flinders, a few codgers and a dormitory full of biddies, he can justly say, “I’ve been very lucky to have written a few things people have liked”.

So, what’s next? Mum’s the word, but it’s about “a woman in Australian history who had a big influence and continues to do so, on our kitchens”.

“Biddies”, at The Street Theatre, May 8-12, bookings to 62471 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au