September in the Rain

Published Wednesday 27 August 2008 at 17:05 by Mary Redman

On a bracing seaside prom, a very ordinary, late middle-aged man and his wife sit in a shelter decorated with pulchritudinous female figures and fat men in too-small swimming suits from saucy postcards of previous generations.

Liz and Jack are reminiscing (well, she is mainly), reliving and quarrelling about their holidays across the years.

On either side of the set, a constantly changing series of period photographs of boarding houses and traffic jams add atmosphere. Imperceptibly the couple transform back into their younger selves to re-enact former holidays by the sea.

Following this transformation it becomes obvious that their respective characters were set from the word go. They merely added hardening layers laid down like a coral reef over the many years of quarrelling and making up with each other.

In Christine Bradnum’s delightful design even their Ford Popular car, dining table, sand castle and the superb Blackpool Tower are cartoon cutouts. From their Winter Gardens seats, Mario Lanza’s American tonsils warble The Student Prince as he sings of “Gaad”. Accustomed as we are to Godber’s writing which, following the shock of the new with Teechers and Bouncers, has majored in low key, overly sentimental and samey nostalgia, this quarter of a century-old play rouses more wry smiles than outright belly laughs.

Some of the best bits in Matt Devitt’s production come when Claire Storey’s housewife and Shaun Hennessy’s bitter miner with a thoroughly romantic centre, having got to the top of the tower, are suffering from vertigo.