Last of the Summer Wine saw three stage productions of the same play in the 1980s. The first ran at Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne for the summer season of 1983 from 18th July till 1st October 1983.

The play starred Peter Sallis and Bill Owen as Clegg and Compo but Brian Wilde refused to take part as he wasn't getting on with Bill Owen and would soon quit in 1984 after Series 8 so instead the play revolved around Clegg and Compo interacting with Clegg's new neighbours Howard & Pearl and Howard's attempts to have an affair with Marina introducing these characters to the world of LotSW. However, Foggy wasn't totally absent, as the play had him resting in bed in Clegg's spare bedroom with a slipped disc, noisily banging for attention off-stage with Clegg and Compo talking about him. Foggy's poor health is an excuse to bring in Ivy and next door neighbour Pearl as health visitors to fuss over him in their domineering ways. Meanwhile, Pearl's husband Howard has been using Clegg's address to receive mail carrying on a postal affair with Marina, who turns up at Clegg's house looking for Howard. If this isn't too much women for poor Clegg he is cajoled by Compo into harbouring young punk rocker Glenda who he found in a doorway when she was thrown out by her neanderthal-looking boyfriend, 'Crusher' Milburn, Ivy's nephew and Clegg's stand-in bread delivery man. Through all the misunderstanding and scheming, Compo proves more of a hindrance than a help.

In the 1983 summer season at Eastbourne whilst Jean Furgusson played Marina, Howard and Pearl were not the later familiar faces; Howard was played by Kenneth Waller who played Old Mr Grace in Are You Being Served? and later Grandad in Bread, and Pearl was played by actress Jean Trend. 

The play proved very popular, despite concerns about lacking Foggy and Nora Batty from the TV show, on top of the worry that one of the important elements the success of LotSW on television was the outdoors scenery of Holmfirth. A show made entirely on location and mostly outside being transferred to a single indoors set inside Clegg's house for what is essentially a very stagey bedroom farce was a big risk, along with the fact that this very Northern humour and bunch of characters were being played in a theatre about as far South as you could go, but it paid off thanks to Roy Clarke's usual crisp charming character-laden script. It played to packed houses in Eastbourne so in 1984 it was revived starting with a short 3 week tour before opening for a second summer season this time at the Pier Theatre, Bournemouth. The 1984 show featured the future TV faces of Robert Fyfe as Howard and Juliette Kaplan as Pearl, with Jean Furgusson again playing Marina. With these actors in place Roy Clarke soon decided to add the characters to the TV show, appearing in 4 of the 6 episodes of Series 8 from December 1984 then becoming full time from Series 9 till the end of LofSW in 2010. The stage play in both 1983 and 1984 also featured TV regular Ivy played by Jane Freeman but not Sid (John Comer) as Comer was ill and died in February 1984. Instead the play introduced Jonathan Linsley as Ivy's nephew "Crusher" Milburn, who'd also be transferred over to the TV series but only for a couple of years. 

Due to it's popularity the stage show was again revived in 1985 but Peter Sallis didn't want to do it a third time, instead opting to sign up for a season of repertory theatre at Birmingham, and Jane Freeman was also unavailable to play Ivy but rather than drop the idea they decided to rework the play to focus on Compo.  With Bill Owen the only TV original cast member remaining it was slightly rewritten so that Foggy being ill offscreen in bed was removed and replaced with Clegg being upstairs ill in bed unseen and his nephew Denis (Derek Fowlds) is brought in to care for his uncle and be a character for Compo to bounce off in place of Clegg. Other than Ivy gone the play then plays out the same in Clegg's front room with Pearl popping in to care for ill Clegg, Marina turning up in search of Howard, taking in the stray Glenda with her boyfriend now being the oaf Chopper instead of  Crusher Milburn.  With Ivy gone so was Milburn but they wanted to keep the Glenda subplot so created a copycat 'Crusher' Milburn called Chopper played by Ian Ratcliffe. The title of the play was altered from simply Last of the Summer Wine in the first two runs to Compo Plays Cupid this time, to highlight that this is now a Compo play. 

As with the first two productions in Eastbourne and Bournemouth, Jean Furgusson returned as Marina whilst Robert Fyfe returned as Howard as per the second production in Bournemouth and now on TV. But Juliette Kaplan was unavailable to play Pearl as she had done in Bournemouth and now was on TV so for this third mounting the role went back to Jean Trend, who had played Pearl in the first production in Eastbourne in 1983. The actress playing Glenda changed through each of the three productions; at Eastbourne in 1983 it was Lucy Aran, for the 1984 tour and Bournemouth it was Caroline Dennis and for the 1985 tour as Compo Plays Cupid it was Elizabeth Elvin. The character did not transfer to the TV show with Milburn. Later in the TV series a completely different plain Glenda was introduced as wife of Barry and daughter of Thora Hird's Edi but they are unconnected.

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Unfortunately for Bill Owen, when it became clear that the other TV cast members would be unavailablehe'd have been better off calling it off himself as despite proving popular the first two times the third incarnation as Compo Plays Cupid proved to be more of a flop. There were less reviews and less positive reviews and people seem to have largely stayed away. Some theatres reported losing money on it from too few visitors, being put down to a combination of factors including the lack of the main cast, the fact that most people that would want to see such a play had already had two opportunities to do so, others reporting that the sort of working class audience for this sort of show were suffering the effects of an economic downturn in 1985 and couldn't afford a night at the theatre whilst others reporting that the working class audience for this sort of thing were off on their summer holidays abroad! Whatever the true reasons, the fact was ticket sales were far below what was expected and this play was not revived again subsequently.

In more recent years a new LotSW stage play has been mounted featuring Foggy, Compo and Clegg which also appeared at the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne in 2009 but this was not the same original stage play, it was a new one adapted by Roy Clarke from his LotSW novel The Moonbather and didn't feature any of the original TV cast. The plot revolves around Foggy attempting to date the niece of Nora Batty (played by Ruth Madoc at Devonshire Park). This newer play has since been mounted by many amateur theatrical groups too.