Time at the Bar
by Josh Smith
Burton Taylor theatre to Saturday 2 November 2002, 9.30pm

The prospect of a student production of 'new writing' may arouse natural suspicions, especially when the theme of the play so clearly alludes to spending time in a bar. But don't be put off going to see this show. The play fulfills the expectation that writers often write most convincingly about what they know best. Happily the subject is one the cast can also engage in, and it shows.

The action is set in a bar in a provincial town in the north of England. The set is divided into two parts and two time-phases. The bar witnesses many chapters in the lives of five characters, Alan, John, Alice, Neil and Lucy. On one side of the bar we see how the lives of these characters at the beginning of their adult lives unfold juxtaposed against what happens to the characters as they age.

Young Alan is a ambitious student, concerned to make something of his life, and get away from his mother. This means leaving home and friends and lover, Alice, for the bright lights of London and a big job as a lawyer. John, young and old, is a home-bird, content to go down the same pub all his life. Neil, a local lad, works on a building site.

Alice and Lucy are frightfully nice and confident girls, attracted to the glamorous life in their youth but settle for provincial domesticity with men they once thought not good enough for them. Alice marries John over a passionate affair with Alan. Lucy for all her pretensions, ends up marrying Neil and owning a boutique in the town.

But Alan finds he is unfulfilled by his well paid city job, finds he cannot live with the loneliness and without his mother, and Alice, and opts to return home and take over the bar which he props up by his best friend John. Only the lifelong secret between these two men - Alan's affair with his wife Alice - breaks the boredom of what their lives become.

The play leaves the audience to reflect upon the lives of the characters for itself and draw its own conclusions. All in all, it is a sharp piece, full of ideas, twists and uncomfortable truths, immediately engaging and entertaining and throughout.

Stephanie Kitchen