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Time Of My Life by Alan Ayckbourn Directed by Charlotte Eastes

	Review Last night I went to a farce. I knew it would be good. Having been to many performances put on by The Fairlight Players during over twenty years, the standard was bound to be excellent. They’re professionals in the guise of being amateur.  And it really was ‘magnifique’ ! We never quite know what to expect when going to a farce. The word comes from old French and it has come to mean comedy created out of human tragedy. English staged farce went through a period of slap-stick humour following WW2 and seemed to consist largely of The Gent falling on his face having slipped on a banana skin (Remember Brian Rix?) but it is to France that we go for the great tradition of farce. France in the 17th and 18th centuries when Corneille and Moliere were creating plays like ‘La Malade Imaginere’.  Alan Ayckbourn however is a creator of true farce in this country. He has that real insight into the vagaries of English middle-class life. One feels he must spend his time eavesdropping whenever he goes out.  ‘Time of my Life’ is about a typical English family over dinner in a Spanish restaurant. The Stratton family business is going through economic decline and Keith Miller, playing father and business boss, duly vacillated between despair and presumption. Mrs Stratton (superbly played by Claire Murray as the ‘anxious-to-keep-up with-the-Jones mother) is now concerned because their youngest son may not be mixing with the right sort of girls. And, of course she is right. Adam (Thomas Edie) is not yet in the family firm, indeed his mother looks upon him as the family’s aesthete capable of editing a media publication and of writing poetry.  But Adam has an ‘unsuitable’ partner at the dinner table; a rude, under-dressed, girl who drinks from the bottle and becomes louder and louder, and more and more drunk as the meal goes on (Wow! Those legs and décolletage!). Charlotte Miller, excelling in this role, her first major part with the Players.  Ayckbourn creates moments of great humour out of very little. And Peter Spencer, playing no less than four parts; the very individual four Spanish waiters, was able to do just that He managed to bring quite unique characterisation to each part, and each waiter gave us a smile or smirk or belly laugh. I found his padding amusing – with one part it was at chest height, the next his stomach. One waiter had big shoes, another battered plimsoles! Later in the play we were captivated by David Burchell’s gravitas at a period of gloom after his long-standing customer Stratton was killed in a car crash. It was beautifully staged and delightful as he produced a long preserved bottle of booze, which he drank, becoming tipsy!  A good play cries out for good production, and The Players have certainly found another Director with talent. Charlotte Eastes produced this Ayckbourn masterpiece. The casting was apt and all the players must be complimented for truly professional performances. As with a well delivered speech, it is important for players to not only make sure the audience can hear what is said, it is also important to phrase and pause in the right places for the audience to react. Charlotte Eastes clearly understands all of this.  It would be invidious not to mention by name the other actors, each one played his/her part so very well: The eldest son, already in the business, already married, behaving ‘correctly’ as mother would have wished, was played by Tom Miller (I wondered if the play could be a ‘Miller Benefit Game’), and Aisling Tigwell playing his long suffering wife. You may already know that The Players have been asked to take one of their recent productions (The Vicar of Dibley) to The Stables theatre in Hastings Old Town towards the end of summer. I am not surprised……….