Life and Beth

Published Thursday 24 July 2008 at 12:05 by Kevin Berry

Recently widowed Beth would really rather be left alone, but everyone is rallying around to ensure that she has a good Christmas. She had a remarkably good husband, or so everyone keeps reminding her.

Life and Beth is Alan Ayckbourn’s 71st play and the third in his Things That Go Bump summer rep season. Things hardly go bump, apart from some rattling tea cups, until the final moment of Act I. Then Gordon, the dead husband appears - he is back to help and guide Beth, much to her annoyance.

The dialogue is rich in the sympathetic platitudes we all rely on when talking to the bereaved. Susie Blake as Beth’s sister-in-law, has the pick of them and she has a consistently funny physical identity.

Playing Beth the ever excellent Liza Goddard expresses her irritation without upsetting anyone. Clearly no one is actually listening to her, which is the very heart of the play. Her exchanges with Adrian McLoughlin’s Gordon show how suffocating the marriage really was.

Richard Stacey as Beth and Gordon’s inept son adds to the understanding of his parents. Ian Hogg’s vicar, whose prayers are unwittingly responsible for bringing Gordon back, is someone we would all cheerfully strangle. Me first, please. But he is rather predictable. Hogg as Gordon, McLoughlin as the vicar perhaps? Both are tastier prospects.

Life and Beth will entertain and delight and it just might alter the way some people think.