Wednesday April 21, 2004
The Guardian
.......
The
amateurs, in short, keep theatre alive in Shrewsbury:
if you want to see a pro-show, it's an hour or more's journey to Stoke,
Mold, Stratford or Birmingham. And while there are one-night stands at
the Music Hall - including last week Warren Mitchell and Alvin
Stardust's Rock 'n' Roll Party - it is the amateurs who provide a steady
diet of drama. So I took myself off to see Shrewsbury Theatre Guild
doing Alan Ayckbourn's 1993 comedy Time of My Life, in the town's
Gateway Arts Centre.
"Amateurs in Ayckbourn?" I can imagine the sophisticated groans. But actors who spend their lives in the workaday world are closer to the source of Ayckbourn's work - dealing here with collapsing businesses and fractured families - than many Equity pros.
Set in a restaurant, and flashing back and forth in time to show how a family birthday-party both encapsulates and heralds disaster, it is one of Ayckbourn's most technically elegant plays. And Jill Teear's production had the right dangerous fun and contained one or two first-rate performances. James Ashfield as a serial adulterer had an authentic nervous heartiness and Tracy Bird was sexily stunning as a flamboyant hairdresser. Bird confirmed my impression that seemingly sedate Shrewsbury is not only packed with red-hot mummers, but that Britain at large is a nation of performers who can't wait to jump out of the closet.
