Golden Jubilee Bedford Park Festival Celebrates Fifty Years Of Drama

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With revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking

50 years ago, the stars of the hit TV police series Softly Softly – Frank Windsor, Norman Bowler and Robert Keegan - performed at the first Bedford Park Festival in Chiswick.

Since then, the Festival has staged a wide range of drama, including plays by Alan Ayckbourn, John Osborne, Michael Frayn, JB Priestley, Terence Rattigan, Somerset Maugham, John Galsworthy, Jimmy Chinn, Dodie Smith, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall.

As part of the Golden Jubilee Bedford Park Festival, local professional theatre company, The XV, are staging Ayckbourn’s lively comedy Relatively Speaking for four days at the Tabard Theatre in Bath Road W4.

Founding partner of the The XV, Christina Balmer said, “I was approached by Tassy Russell, the festival programme director, to find a light and fun play that would entertain its audience and we both agreed that Ayckbourn would fit the bill.”

The play is a piece of comic craftsmanship which takes a single misunderstanding - a man who airily mistakes his girlfriend's lover and the lover's wife for her parents - and keeps it unbelievably afloat for two hours.

When Ayckbourn himself was asked what his inspiration was he said, "Stephen [Joseph] asked me simply for a play which would make people laugh when their seaside holidays were spoiled by the rain and they came into the theatre to get dry before trudging back to their landladies. This seemed as worthwhile a reason for writing a play as any so I tried to comply."

Relatively Speaking is on at The Tabard Theatre, Bath Road, Chiswick Wednesday 21 June – Saturday 24 June at 7.30pm 4.00pm Matinee Saturday 24th June at 4.00pm

Tickets can be bought online

June 16, 2017