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A Month of Sundays, Poulner Players, Church Hall, Poulner, Ringwood

THE poignancy and helplessness of old age were so beautifully captured in this delightful and well directed production that there were times when I, and I suspect many of the audience, felt close to tears. But Bob Larbey’s excellent script, set in a retirement home, ensures that pathos is always balanced by humour, so laughter was never far away – think The Good Life or As Time Goes By and you have the idea.

Whist John Turpin (Cooper) and Peter Ansell (Aylott) cannot claim to be spring chickens, neither is anything like as old as the characters they portrayed yet they were utterly and heart-breakingly believable as two elderly men terrified of what might lie ahead, keeping their minds active by trying to remember all eleven men in the 1947 cricket team. Particular plaudits must go to Mr Turpin who, with a tour-de-force that kept him on stage throughout, showed that, unlike other home residents, he is in no danger of joining the zombies and paddling in the pond.

There were lovely warm characterisations too from Judith Lansdale (Nurse Wilson) and Rita McDermott (Mrs Baker), while Julie Lax and Mike Freemantle were the epitome of bored duty visitors as Cooper’s daughter and son-in-law.

Linda Kirkman

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