PLAY'S PROBLEM FAMILY

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32360, 28 July 1970, Page 12

PLAY'S PROBLEM FAMILY

“Come Laughing Home,” a new comedy with tragic undertones by the Britiah playwriting team, Keith Waterhouse and Willia Hall, is being produced byYvette Bromley for a fournight season to open in the Risingholme Theatre Centre, Reeves Road, with a “late matinee" at 4.30 p.m. on Saturday.

The play, about the problems of a family crammed into a boxy little council house on a big housing estate, is one of several new plays being produced by Mrs Bromley this year as a result of her trip to London and New York last year.

The Fawcetts, the characters in “Come Laughing Home,” are a family beset with problems, by no means the least of which is the pregnancy of their unmarried daughter, Vera.

The pregnancy is seen by the playwrights as a consequence of another of the Fawcetts’ problems—coping with the psychological effect of life in the “little boxes:” the faceless, featureless new towns built all around the big cities of England to cope with the population explosion, Mrs Bromley says.

“Come Laughing Home” is, Mrs Bromley says, a comedy insofar as any plav these days can be called funny which deals with the problems and inadequacies of human nature.

People with any depth of feeling are aware that what is funny is also very sad. that the heroine of a play is sometimes far from perfect, and that the villain is just a victim of his circumstances, she says.

“The theme is ‘little boxes' and their effect on the personality, especially of the young, who are bv nature rebels. Getting into trouble was perhaps a 'Freudian slip’ on the part of the daughter. She just wanted her life to take a different direction.

“The plot deals basically with the new thinking among young unmarried mothers that, rather than use the father of their child as an expedient by marrying him, they would prefer to face the difficulties of rearing their illegitimate children without the doubtful benefit of a reluctant ‘noble’ husband,” Mrs Bromley said.

The members of the cast are Robert and Noeleen Le Fevre. Valerie Pendrey, Gary Langford, Len Greenway, Jeanne Edgar and Peter Smith.

The production In the Risingholme Theatre will be in the same “Intimate” style as Mrs Bromley's previous play. Two performances are scheduled for Saturday—the late matinee, and an evening performance at 8 p.m. —and on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the performance will start at 8 p.m. To emphasise the “intimate” nature of the production, play-goers will be served with coffee before each performance and during the interval.