Past productions

THE GOOD LIFE

26 October – 4 November 2023

Adapted by Jeremy Sams, based on the TV Series by John Esmonde & Bob Larbey

Forty is the excuse for many a midlife crisis drama, but none has proved as funny or as enduringly loveable as that of Tom Good who gives up his highly pressurised job to live off the land. Unfortunately for his upwardly mobile neighbours, Tom and his wife Barbara live in a semi in Surbiton so digging up their garden to grow their own fruit and veg and keep livestock is not seen as a desirable decision by Margo and Jerry Leadbetter.

Jeremy Sams’ stage play, based on the hugely popular sitcom by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, reunites the well-loved characters (not forgetting Geraldine the goat) as they get themselves into and out of scrapes – some old, some new, all hilarious. Tapping into issues that resonate now more than ever, The Good Life is a witty reimagining of a television classic, with a wellyful of laughs.

Cast

Photography by Marie-Ange Bouchard

Review | November 2023 | Theo Spring

In spite of being on our television screens between 1975 and 1978, ask any adult about the TV series The Good Life and they probably not only recall it with affection but can also often put a name not only to the four central characters but also to the actors who took the roles. In case their names may have escaped you in 2023, they were Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington as Margot and Jerry Leadbetter and Felicity Kendall and Richard Briars as Barbara and Tom Good.

This adaptation by Jeremy Sams, based on the TV Series by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, telescopes the tale from Tom’s growing ennui with his life at the drawing board creating freebie plastic animals for cereal packets to the heightened involvement of a number of people in the resuscitation and saving of ‘Pinky’s’ eighth piglet, born the runt and needing Barbara’s determination alongside food, oxygen, warmth and the willpower to survive.

The use of the revolve allowed for two contrasting sets. The Good’s cosy working kitchen and the elegance of the Leadbetter’s domain. Designed by Jenny Kingman, both sides exuded the 1970’s with their décor and the props used. The ‘redecoration’ in the Leadbetter home at the tail end of Act II, which included a whole wall of new wallpaper as well as different furniture, was a major accomplishment not only for the design but also by the backstage crew who achieved it. There was further attention to detail with the music used throughout the show – specially recorded by Ian Rae – all of it being music that would have been heard during that period. The radio also briefly caught an original episode of The Archers provided by Stephen Beet. Casting such well-known people could have been difficult but Director Morven Rae was fortunate to find four actors who admirably transformed themselves into the characters.

Harriet Datta was, in every way, the perfect choice for Barbara and captured Barbara’s slight dottiness, her enthusiasm for their planned change from being comfortably off to ploughing up and replanting their Surbiton garden, getting chickens and pigs as well as, to the audience’s delight, Geraldine the goat who so amusingly caused chaos.

Chris Chambers initially embodied Tom’s frustration with his mundane role at work, transforming himself with a speedy and growing enthusiasm for his proposal to change the way he and Barbara lived. There were the ‘downs’ of just lettuce and cress for supper and wondering whether cress first and then the lettuce would be more sustaining, to his wild excitement over the birth of the piglets, as well as often wondering whether he might go back to his ‘drawing board’ to earn some much needed money even for a couple of days a week.

Personifying Margo Leadbetter, matching voice, mannerisms and the henpecking of poor Jerry, Claire Connery also mastered the silent put-downs, at one point entering the Good’s kitchen, walking round it for a short while then returning through the door, speaking volumes but saying not a word! She captured so much of the remembered television character, right down to the pronunciation of her long-suffering husband’s name.

Poor Jerry – always in the wrong. Jonathan Dolling certainly delivered Jerry as the underdog at home but contrived to be more of his own man when talking about his role at work, particularly as he felt he owed his own position there to Tom’s skills as a draughtsman. The scene when an embarrassed Jerry tried to explain to Barbara that he liked her but didn’t, as he had earlier said, fancy her, was skilled acting.

Add into the story three more actors, each of whom took on double roles to extend the tale, some of whom had to do a lightening turn around both in costume and character, going out of the door and returning moments later as someone different. Not easily achieved but Brian Miller made a pompous Sir and a wicked Harry the Pigman; Susie Timms was a lively Sir’s wife and also his secretary; Diane Ebden was the milkman chasing the theft of a bottle of milk then transforming into Mary with a Welsh accent, and Dominic O’Shea was Doctor Joe who constantly denied being a vet but happily, as the Policeman, got together with Mary. Lucinda Banton who manipulated all Geraldine’s movements, skilfully made herself almost inconspicuous.

There was so much ‘business’ to learn, including a cooked breakfast off the Aga in the Good’s kitchen and so many sound cues – the crowing cockerel for one. Costumes were apt for the era and Sue Brandon had created an excellent contrast between Margo’s glitzy wardrobe and Tom and Barbara’s utilitarian clothes. Under Morven Rae’s detailed direction, the show had been well rehearsed, and the audience – part of the whole run’s total sellout – most certainly enjoyed it.