Saturday, November 9, 2019

4 December - Life and Beth


Allelujah!  In November we finally managed to read Allelujah!   However, I am wondering if it was worth the effort and stress of reading a play with sooooo many characters, and I will try very hard to rein in my flights of fancy and stick to smaller casts!

For December I luckily stumbled across an Ayckbourn Christmas play.  It being Ayckbourn it's not exactly a pantomime!




Life and Beth is a 2008 play by Alan Ayckbourn. It was written as a third part of a trilogy named Things That Go Bump, uniting the cast of the first two plays: Haunting Julia (1994) and Snake in the Grass (2002) which we recently read. It is about a recently bereaved widow, Beth, troubled by her family’s misguided support and a late husband who won’t leave her alone.  Ayckbourn considered it his equivalent to Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit (which we've also read!).

This the first play to be written since Alan Ayckbourn’s stroke in 2006. After the stroke, he doubted if he could return to writing, at some points considering giving it up and just directing. 

It is Christmas, and the play begins with recently bereaved Beth and her sister-in-law, Connie, sitting watching carols on television. Connie, in a one-sided conversation, praises her late brother, Gordon. Although Beth quietly agrees with Connie’s idea of her idyllic marriage to Gordon, she expresses subtle annoyance with Connie’s idea that the whole family will have to look after her this first Christmas alone, and Connie’s hints of self-pity don’t help either. Beth is more concerned about the disappearance of her cat, Wagstaff, who disappeared on the day of the funeral.


Characters: 
·         Beth, a recently bereaved widow, very much subservient to her husband during their marriage but now living her own life
·         Gordon, Beth’s late overbearing and pedantic husband, formerly a Health & Safety officer
·         Connie, Gordon’s alcoholic sister, marginalised by her family in favour of her brother
·         David, the local vicar
·         Martin, Gordon and Beth’s son, well-meaning but inheriting all of the wrong attributes of Gordon
·         Ella, Martin’s new girlfriend, overpowered by Martin’s misplaced affection

The original play starred some familiar names to some of us: Lisa Goddard & Susie Blake.










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