The Good Life 
People's Theatre
4th Oct 2022
Play by Jeremy Sams based on the TV series by John Esmonde and Bob Larby
Directed by Steve Hewitt
This week at People's Theatre you can be swept back in time to 1970s Suburbia to relive the moment Tom and Barbara Good decide to go self-sufficient and turn their ornamental borders into an allotment...complete with chickens, pigs, and Geraldine the wayward goat.
Perfect casting of the four main characters brings this much-loved, iconic situation comedy to life on the stage. Ellie Pullen and Stuart Laidler and Sarah McLane and Mark Buckley recreate the characters and their unlikely but enduring friendship. Margo watches with increasing horror and incredulity as her neighbours proceed to lower the tone (and property values) of the neighbourhood. As her objections become shriller, Gerry begins to show a grudging respect for his neighbours' crazy choice of lifestyle.
Humour comes from the juxtaposition of the suburban ideal against the new wave, hippy idea of self-sufficiency. The two couples are like chalk and cheese - and yet their friendship endures.
A series of events with livestock, poppy seed cake, peapod wine and Geraldine the Goat will keep you amused and entertained for the evening, as well as providing just a little bit of nostalgia for the days of quality British sit-coms.
It may be set in the seventies, but the idea of producing your own food and energy strikes a surprising chord with the current economic climate. We would all like to be a little less reliant on the commercial providers right now, perhaps we should take a page out of Tom and Barbara's book and take up the Good Life ourselves!
Showing until Sat 8th October.
Denise Sparrowhawk
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