“…that was probably one of the best, the happiest, moments of our lives. Only the trouble with those sorts of moments is that you seldom ever realise what they are – until they’re gone… I mean very rarely do you find yourself saying to yourself, I am happy now. Sometimes you say, I was happy then. Or sometimes even I will be happy when… but rarely do you get to realise it now.”
This is spoken by one of the characters in Alan Ayckbourn’s Time of My Life, which the MADC is producing at the Manoel Theatre from the 8 to 10 April. It is a sad but true observation of life that happiness is elusive, that many of us go through life without realising and enjoying those moments when we are truly happy.
The play examines the Stratton family – Gerry and Laura, their sons Glyn and Adam and their respective partners – in a painfully close and intimate way, and uncovers the layers of desperation, unhappiness and loss that each member is personally experiencing to some degree or other.
The starting point is a family gathering at the Stratton’s favourite restaurant to celebrate Laura’s fifty-fourth birthday. To the casual observer it is a normal, happy, family outing; yet the celebration is the catalyst for an exploration of the family’s lives.
Gerry is a self-made businessman. He started his career as a builder, but with a combination of astuteness and ruthlessness, he managed to weather economic downturns to build a successful company. His wife Laura is a force to be reckoned with. She has played an important, but mostly unacknowledged, role in her husband’s success and is, at heart, an unhappy woman.
Their elder son Glyn works with his father – he is the responsible, mature one, yet battles constantly to get out from his father’s shadow and win his mother’s affection. Adam is the fickle one, constantly changing career, never knowing what he wants out of life – yet he is the apple of his mother’s eye. Glyn’s wife Stephanie is someone who has married into a good family yet lives in a permanent state of disappointment that her husband did not turn out to be the strong, decisive man she thought he would be. Adam’s latest conquest is Maureen, a hairdresser trying to improve her status in life who feels hopelessly out of her depth when she meets the family.
The Strattons are ostensibly an ordinary family, dealing with everyday problems and situations with which most people can identify, and typical members of the middle class that playwright Ayckbourn often targets in his work. His plays are mostly described as comedies, but they are, in fact, often acute observations of the minutiae of family life. In Time of My Life, the comedy lies in the writing and in some of the situations in which the Strattons find themselves. However, beneath the humour lies the seed of a tragedy that will cause the disintegration of the family unit. This may be an ordinary story about an ordinary family, but theatre audiences – having always shown an interest in human stories and situations on the stage – will find much with which to identify.
The MADC’s production of Time of My Life is directed by Nanette Brimmer and the cast includes Polly March, Colin Willis, Stefan Cachia Zammit, Simon de Marco, Pia Zammit, Faye Paris and James Borg.
More information is available by emailing: [email protected] and website: www.madc.biz. Booking is available from the Manoel Theatre booking office, tel. no. 2124-6389, fax no. 2123-7340, email: [email protected] and website www.teatrumanoel.com.mt.