The Stage

Our House

Published Thursday 7 February 2008 at 17:25 by Kevin Berry

Lots of good hearted laughter in this John Godber play, but at its core is a not always gentle lament for a lost way of life.

First performed in 2001, Our House is now on tour for the first time. May is a widowed grandmother who is packing her belongings for a move to an apartment in Spain. She is leaving the council house that she and her late husband bought for their retirement. Old friends and neighbours have drifted away and a problem family has been re-housed next door.

May’s memories live again - the good, the sad and the quite spiky. Godber’s deftly paced direction ensures clarity as memories mix with the present day.

Jacqueline Naylor as May gets to the very core of her character. Her sharp verbal retorts and withered physicality say so much about her. Dicken Ashworth is equally thorough in his portrayal of May’s husband, the part he played in the original production.

Matthew Booth as Jack, their son who becomes a writer, is excellent in both his anger and his diffidence, but he does not always move appropriately.

There is humanity and integrity in the writing and recognisable truth in the acting. Many in the opening night audience at Wakefield were shocked when Booth, as the teenage Jack, called his mother a “silly cow”. They gasped when, after leaving his wife, Jack brought another woman to the family home. This play and its cast will reach people.

An enjoyable denouement is sure to make anyone who is suffering with awful neighbours grin for a week.