Time and Time Again
Devonshire Park Theate
Until Saturday 1st August
This visit marked an evening of firsts for me. My first visit to the Devonshire Park Theatre in Eastbourne and Time and Time Again being the first Alan Ayckbourn play that I have seen. All that I knew about this play prior to attending the performance from the posters advertising the show was that the plot in some way incorporated both cricket and a Gnome. That Gnome was named Bernard, and the show opens with Leonard (Pete Ashmore) entering the garden of the house he shares with his sister Anne (Katy Dean) and brother-in-law Graham (Phil Stewart) where he uses Bernards hat as a coat stand for his jacket.
Leonard has retreated to the garden to converse with Bernard having returned from his mother’s funeral. He is played as a quiet and cryptic man for most of the play and it is difficult to deduce what he really feels about much of life as he experiences it. His sister Anne appears to live by the motto that everything in life can be fixed by a cup of tea and spends the majority of her life catering for her husbands’ whims and looking out for her brother.
We’re also introduced to one of Grahams employees, Peter (Simon Pothecary) and his fiancée Joan (Tanya-Loretta Dee) who have attended the funeral. Whilst Anne is absent catering to everyone else the lewd Graham makes an unwanted advance towards Joan who flees to the garden. Here she encounters Leonard who recites Wordsworth to her (the first two lines of one his poems at least) and so here our story which started rather gently picks up pace.
This show incorporates great performances from the five cast members. All of the scenes take place either in the house or the garden of where Leonard, Anne and Graham live and so the set remains the same apart from minor seasonal changes as the story progresses throughout the year. Written over 50 years ago in 1971, this show has stood the test of time and remains relevant and accessible to the modern audience.
There are some fantastic laugh out loud moments during this show and some really great elements of physical comedy, one in particular which involves a pair of binoculars. The play doesn’t satisfy the audience with the neat happy ending that we are often used to, but then isn’t that true to life itself?
Time and Time again is playing at the Devonshire Park Theatre until 1st August 2026.
Reviewer: Lisa Dawn