All in Good Time

Bill Naughton's play about the tragi-comic 'false start' to a new marriage manages to pull off several things at once. As well as being very much a snapshot of an era now slowly fading into the dim and distant past, the play touches on themes which are just as relevant today, doing so with bracing humour. Character types familiar from the slew off gritty, urban, Northern, 'kitchen sink'-type dramas of the 1960s are here in abundance but with a slightly more humorous edge than usual. Interestingly, the central conceit of the drama (a newly married couple having to live with the groom's parents) has become something of a contemporary issue in recent years: given the nature of the housing market and the economic climate generally, more and more people find themselves having to continue to live at home with mum and dad. However, unlike the beleaguered Arthur and Violet, I doubt very much that any of today's young romantics would wait until the wedding night to attempt to consummate their relationship: that aspect of the play roots it very firmly in another era!

This is a play which felt very much at home in the back streets of Blackburn and all the cast obviously felt a connection with their various characters. The summoning up of time, of place and of a set of recognisably familiar personality types was very well done by the Arts Club and there was a comfortably confident feel to the way the drama was presented. The comic tone of the piece was, on the whole, nicely established and the effective characterisations helped enormously in driving the plot and also in illuminating some of the play's more interesting ideas.

The curtain opened on a well constructed set which made good use of the performing space to suggest the different rooms in the Fitton household: I did think the back wall of the sitting room was a little bare however and seemed to be crying out for a 'Monarch of the Glen' or a set of three porcelain ducks in flight! The intelligent use of space also helped to suggest the lack of privacy which was the root of the young couple's problems. Props and costumes had also obviously been thoughtfully considered and were also sympathetic to the period, without screaming 'this is a play set in the 1960s'. There would have been nothing worse than dressing everyone in the cast from top to toe in Biba fashions and scattering lava lamps hither and yon: I appreciated the way the director and stage team appreciated that not everybody - in fact probably nobody! - living in a working class Northern household in the early 1960s would parade around as if auditioning for the front cover of a Beatles album. A thoughtful bit of attention to detail typical of the Arts Club technical crew. As the play was written before the '60s started swinging, it would have been an anachronism anyway and despite Philip Larkin's famous pronouncement that 'Sexual intercourse began in 1963', for poor Arthur and Violet, their part in this sexual revolution seems initially like very wishful thinking indeed.

Blustering Northern patriarch Ezra Fitton was played with panache by Geoff Baron, who captured the comic pomposity of the man perfectly. Alison Bell brought a quiet, caring dignity to the part of Lucy Fitton and made it clear that here was the true intelligence of the household. Newly married Arthur was played with skill by Tom Haworth, expressing the emasculating pressures of his home life and the frustrations of his unfortunate situation superbly. His bride, Violet, was an essay in confused emotions from Lisa-marie Hunt and the two young newly-weds had an obvious connection which came over the footlights and drew the audience in to their dilemma. Arthur's cheeky brother Geoffrey was played with a refreshingly down to earth realism by Alec Bell - the best performance I've seen from Alec so far in his amateur career - and I enjoyed his take on the character.

Violet's parents, Leslie and Liz Piper, were both well played by Tony Lewis and Andrea Lloyd Nixon; neither long-suffering Leslie and gossiping Liz provide the best template for married life for young Violet to follow! Tony brought a dignified air to Leslie which worked well in contrast to the harder-edged Liz and their relationship was well portrayed. Arthur's boss at the cinema, Joe Thompson, was another excellent character study from David Pilkington: he really brought this chippy Northern businessman to life. Joe's brassy lady friend, Molly Thompson, was another vivid technicolor creation from Charlotte McConnell and together, they made a great pair. Jonathan Mallinson completed the cast list as friend of the family Fred Stanfield and shone in a comical  scene where his particular brand of advice included a humorous dose of common sense!

Overall, the play was given an effective airing with confident performances helping to wring the humour from the script and amused the audience at the Clubhouse theatre no end. I did wonder sometimes if the pitch of one or two performances wasn't quite as consistent as it might have been, resulting in one or two uneven scenes and there seemed to be a tendency for some of the cast to seem to think their lines were more amusing than the audience did: as a result, on a few occasions, there was very nearly a spot of corpsing from a couple of the cast members. This inconsistency also got in the way of one or two of the play's characters being fully believable on stage and as a result, there were occasions when the play seemed to become a little 'fuzzy' and unfocused. Also, the need for one or two prompts did occasionally spoil the rhythm of a scene but only momentarily and there was never a sense that the cast weren't fully in control of the script.

Despite the odd little niggle here and there however, the evening's entertainment ran relatively smoothly overall, carrying the audience along as the Fittons' unfortunate predicament ran its course. The question of Arthur's parentage was very humorously handled, with Geoff and Alison beautifully underplaying their comic scenes and I particularly enjoyed the way the cast presented all the 'dots' in the narrative and left us to join them up ourselves. As always at the Arts Club this was a production of exemplary quality which, coupled with the warm welcome and the friendly atmosphere, made for a thoroughly entertaining evening.

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