Review: Time of My Life, Hen and Chicken

Alan Ayckbourn’s Time of My Life generates an intense sense of drama through its brilliantly observed, tightly scripted interactions of a family doomed to disappointment and discontentedness through selfishness, drunkenness and envy. Each scene unfolds nonsequentially on a different table at the same restaurant, joining the dots around one central evening of a fated birthday get together.

The spectacle is both engrossing and familiar to anyone that has experienced that strange mixture of emotions when another party distracts us from our quattro formaggi with raised voices and drunken fuss. We’ll feel disapproval, guilt and schadenfreude – as well as, of course, relief: we all have a friend or relative who’s always just one glass of Pinot from abandoning their gritted-teeth smiles and unleashing furious drunken disapprobation.

Among the many strengths of this current production by Bristol’s SPP Theatre Company is its choice of venue. Sat in the round above The Hen and Chicken on North Street, the audience is itself thrust into the position of anxious co-diners, caught up in the intense moments of unrequited affection and muted enmity that transpire, the production adeptly parodying the curious custom of staging our most intimate moments in public. Even the crude lighting – on a rig usually used to provide the stark spotlight of a comedy venue – adds something, parodying the garish ambiance of a dilapidated taverna and helping to expose the emotional sterility of an acrimonious marriage.

But the cast also accentuates the assets of Ayckbourn’s work through the outright quality of their acting. It’s striking that a small, amateur company has been able to deploy players who all seem so suited to their roles – a testament to their casting, direction and individual skills. Jan Catterall is commanding as the Strattons’ hyper-Northern matriarch, and Caroline Yorke particularly impresses as the disruptive and disapproved-of hairdresser girlfriend.

Joe Marsden perfectly executes the arrogant mannerisms of a narcissistic, philandering first-born, and his character’s fall from grace is both delicious and disturbing. Michael Clark assumes the part of not one but four generically European waiters, aiding Ayckbourn’s mockery of the xenophobic dynamic of a lazy family’s habitual trip to the same old local restaurant. And Adam Stratton is convincing as the nouveau riche family’s underachieving younger son – particularly so as he is a late stand-in (original cast member Paul Davis had to withdraw from the production at late notice due to ill health). Stratton has clearly come a long way since his last performance – as a barn door in his school Nativity, apparently.

The second half of the play is relatively long, but the performers make short work of it, regaining a sense of pace and accelerating towards the ending which neatly circles back to a few moments before the opening scene. And the production manages to project the play’s sense of tension and anguish in a way that should last in the audience’s mind long after its curtain call. Time of My Life concludes tonight, and I’d very readily recommend taking any tickets still available.

Time of My Life concludes on Friday, Sept 9 at the Hen and Chicken, North St, Bristol. For more info, visit www.spptheatrecompany.org.uk