Charles Hutchinson reviews Our House

8:45am Friday 14th March 2008

JOHN Godber wrote Our House for Hull Truck's 30th anniversary in 2001, staging the first half of his Chekhovian drama in a warehouse, the second in the main auditorium as the story moved inside from the garden.

Where once the play played in two places in one theatre each night but never toured, now it is all set in Number 102 and is on the road for the first time, visiting three North Yorkshire theatres en route to Hull.

Our House was already autobiographical and has taken on extra resonance since the death of Godber's mother, while the disintegration of community spirit continues apace.

In this antediluvian comedic and political drama, May (Jacqueline Naylor) is reluctantly packing up home six months after her husband, retired Upton miner Ted (Dicken Ashworth), died of a heart attack. Son Jack (Matthew Booth), a teacher turned writer - like Godber himself - is helping her to move to Spain. Neighbours Sonja (Annmarie Hosell) and Les (Hull Truck newcomer Lewis Linford), are on the social and anti-social, driving May from the council house she and Ted acquired 45 years earlier (and later bought in the Thatcher era) with their campaign of abuse and Eminem records.

For all the down-to-earth Yorkshire humour of a story that unfolds in chronological flashback, this remains one of Godber's angriest plays, expressing his disquiet at displacement, ill-conceived government policy, the lack of appreciation of the old and the devaluing of marriage (Jack cheats on his wife, Fiona Wass's Sharon).

Ashworth, reprising the avuncular role he first played seven years ago, gives a giant performance, while Naylor's matriarchal May is both shrewish and yet house proud to the last. Our House is Godber's The Cherry Orchard, and this is a poignant, passionate, puissant revival of his most naturalistic piece.

• Our House, Hull Truck Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, until tomorrow, box office 01904 623568.

• Also at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 31 to April 5, 01723 370541; Harrogate Theatre, May 28 to 31, 01423 502116; Hull Truck Theatre, June 3 to 21, 01482 323638.

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