CityLife

On The Piste

John Godber's On The Piste

ANOTHER resurrected romp from the one-man play factory that is John Godber, he of Bouncers, Teechers, Up ’n’ Under, Perfect Pitch and many, many more.

On The Piste, first seen back in 1990, was the result of its author taking a holiday on the ski slopes and, like much else that Godber writes, it is packed from curtain up to down with all the clichés.

Chris and Alison (Stuart Wade and Kate Coogan), together for 10 years but having a problem with their relationship, have ventured to a rather down market Austrian ski resort in the hope that a change of scene might help.

They pal along with Bev and Dave (Catherine Kinsella and Richard Oldham) who have only been together for six months but are already in trouble because he has a roving eye and she is proving annoyingly stupid.

Going downhill

Then there’s Melissa (Loveday Smith), up-market attractive but temporarily husband-less and with a relationship that might also being going downhill.

Add ski god instructor Tony (Adrian Bouchet) and I’m sure you can guess the rest  - this is Godber after all and you often emerge from his stuff with the conviction that you could have done better yourself.

Thank goodness then for a Coliseum production that does its absolute best to gloss over the shortcomings and inject some conviction into the proceedings - and actually succeeds.

There isn’t a weak link in the six-strong cast and director Kevin Shaw quite miraculously manages to wring some depth of character out of Godber’s two-dimensional scribblings as well as ensuring that the pace rarely slackens.    

Mediocre creation

One of the main reasons this decidedly mediocre creation has proved reasonably popular since it first appeared almost 20 years ago is the staging, which demands the gimmick of a working ski slope.

MEN Award-winning designer Richard Foxton provides a Christmas card vision of snow-covered trees surrounding the slope, which, while not the grandest gradient I’ve seen used for this show, is comfortably useable. A surprise Abba sequence adds to the jollity and spectacle.

And outside the theatre, surprise, surprise, deserted streets instead of the drunken rabble that usually has to be negotiated on the way back to the car park.

Are the council initiatives working? Seems so and it certainly made the trip to and from the theatre a pleasanter experience than for many years past.

Until September 26