Lorna Irvine is amused by the touring production.
Based on writer/director John Godber's own grandparents' experiences of holidaying in Blackpool in the 1950s, this gentle nostalgia piece may be as small and sweet as a stick of peppermint rock but has warmth and goodness written all the way through it...even Pip Leckenby's cute pier set lights up.
Liz and Jack (Claire Sweeney and John Thomson) are the classic bickering married couple at the beach, starting and finishing each other's sentences. She's a classic mumsy fusspot/ Liverpudlian sexpot; he's a bluff misanthropic Yorkshireman, and they relay anecdotes to the audience as though confiding in old friends.
“When there's any real work to be done, he's as rare as rocking horse shit,” quips Liz. “I've seen yer Ma's tan, only it's not a tan, that - it's rust,” counters Jack, and on they go, bantering and fighting about nothing much of any consequence.
Both performers are engaging and have fine chemistry together, corpsing only once when Sweeney parodies a rude bandy-legged Bernard Manning type.
There may be no new staggering insights to be had, simply a harking back to travel sickness; sweating in Pac-A-Macs, barley sugars, the importance of butterfly buns and the putting up of deckchairs as test of true masculinity.
There are chinks of poignancy in the superb portrayal of their older selves, and a spicy moment when Jack loses it, getting into a tirade about the mistreatment of working-class people, but in the main it is undemanding, good-natured fare, filled with the dying embers of a more innocent Britain, when rolled-up trouser legs and Kiss Me Quick hats in the summer were as racy as it got.
Runs at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal until November 30th, see press and website for details:
www.atgtickets.com
www.johngodber.co.uk
www.spellboundproductions.co.uk
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