September in the Rain, The Rondo Theatre, Larkhall, Bath

REVIEW: Blackpool in the rainy season may not be everyone's idea of a good holiday, but for Yorkshire couple Jack and Liz it's a yearly fixture on their calendar a week of highs and lows celebrated with grim determination, whatever the weather.

The weather, of course, is usually rain, hence the title of John Godber's September in the Rain, which played at Bath's Rondo Theatre on Saturday.

This Eclectic Theatre production starred Alison Campbell as Liz and Peter Burford as Jack, rolling back the years as they reminisced about their annual pilgrimage to the Riviera of the North.

Godber's bittersweet journey through the lives of this ordinary couple brought many laughs but also much sadness.

Jack is a big, burly miner, unaccustomed to the niceties of life such as holding hands or donning a bathing suit on the beach.

Liz is a young wife, eager to please yet frustrated by her husband's lack of spontaneity.

As he and Liz struggle their way through a succession of Blackpool boarding houses and an innumerable amount of rows, the years roll by, the family grows up, and the pair fall into a comfortable rut of familiarity.

Therein lies the play's strength, for it's that very familiarity which Godber is so adept at pulling out, holding up to the light and examining giving rise to many of the knowing chuckles as the tale unfolds.

Alison Campbell and Peter Burford were adept as the ageing couple, sweeping through the first post-honeymoon years, through child-rearing and on to infirm old age, unfolding their lives before us.

A minimalist use of set, providing one item of furniture that did service as, among other things, a bus stop bench, a boarding house bed and the bench seat of their unreliable Ford Consul, is a challenge to any actor.

But this duo swept through the piece with ease, invoking a windswept Blackpool seafront or the Tower Ballroom as vivid as any multi-coloured set extravaganza.

Indeed, this is where the work triumphed in the wealth of everyday detail, everyday experience and a far from everyday performance.

By Joyce Sharland-Brown