CityLife

Company Along The Mile

TOM Bidwell’s intriguing play delights in constantly surprising its audience.

It opens in a common-or-garden Blackpool hotel room, where George (Dominic Gately) is lying on the bed, trouserless, reading the paper and listening to sport on the radio.

So far, so heterosexual. But gradually it emerges that next to him in the bed is garrulous transvestite Stella (Toby Sawyer, seen in the Royal Exchange’s Mary Barton).

‘Ah ha’, we think, especially when we hear about their “arrangement” and money changing hands.

Increasingly complex

George’s fearful reaction to any contact with the outside world seems to confirm this assumption.

But all is not what it seems and the relationship between the pair gets increasingly complex, especially after the unexpected entrance into the room of a bellboy (John Catterall), who the jittery George promptly brains!

Suddenly the play turns into a seaside version of something by the Coen brothers as the pair plot to get rid of the body.

But there are plenty of surprises still in store. Bidwell, a recent graduate of the BBC Writers Academy who’ll soon be writing for one of the Corporation’s most popular soaps, is evidently a talent of note and he’s well-served by the actors and director Justin Audibert.
 

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