Lancashire's very own Stephen Tompkinson was welcomed home with open arms inside the Blackpool Grand Theatre for his latest role in Sign of the Times.
The heartwarming play gives us a comical but all too clear look at life and how we endlessly strive to climb the career ladder.
Unfortunately the ladder occationally has a step or two missing which can unexpectedly bring you crashing back down to rock bottom.
Tompkinson, (Wild at Heart, Drop the dead Donkey) plays Frank, an unglamorous dreamer who wants to make it as a spy-writer but is stuck as ‘Head of Installations’ at a Yorkshire firm of sign makers.
He is given a young work experience lad called Alan, played by Tom Shaw (The Inbetweeners, Skins)
and the pair form a close relationship 60ft above the ground.
The funny and realistic bond between the two starts to turn sour during the second act as frank suddenly realises he is being made redundant with no prior warning.
Roles are then reversed as the pair cross paths once again years later when Alan interviews his former mentor for a job.
Stephen delivers an array of witty one liners with expert timing and plays the warm and worldly-wise Frank to a tee making him the old-school supervisor everyone has humoured at some time in their working lives.
Tom, playing the only other character in the play, is very believable as the moody teenager, in the first act, until after the interval he comes into his own as the older version of Alan.
Both actors build the characters utterly convincingly and the bitter sweet relationship between them takes hold of the audience and leaves them wanting to meet up with the pair in another five years’ time to get the next instalment.
The play is very well written and seems perfectly titled in todays current climate of dwindling jobs and desperate workers.
Audiences will leave the theatre having laughed and cried, but shockingly having thought about Frank and how he could be anyone of us.
Tompkinson and Shaw are brilliant together - true, some of the gags are a bit predictable but we can forgive them that – it is our Stephen after all.
'Sign of the Times' - a real comedy with substance that leaves you thinking but feeling good.
RATING - Very Funny 8/10
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