COMMUNITY theatre actor Becky Kordowicz, from Menston, has a wealth of experience performing in lots of different plays, mainly at Ilkley Playhouse but also at Bingley Arts Centre. However, her latest role - ‘Doris’ in Bernard Slade’s vintage comedy Same Time, Next Year (to be staged by Bingley Little Theatre) is her most challenging to date.

Becky Kordowicz Becky Kordowicz (Image: Bingley Little Theatre)

Becky said: “The play has just two characters so each of us has to learn a whole play and we are never off the stage. The couple – Doris, whom I play and George (played by Ned Sproston) meet as strangers in 1951 when he sends over a steak to his unknown fellow diner in a country inn. Food is not all they share that evening, and the one-night stand is repeated, same time, annually for 24 years. We see them at roughly five-year intervals. The lines are a feat in themselves! But then there’s the numerous costumes and wigs! Obviously, fashions change, and these depict the period. The whole thing seems to move at break-neck speed...”

The play is directed by Mervyn Button, who has performed and directed numerous times at Ilkley Playhouse and Yeadon Town Hall as well as Bingley Arts Centre. He says of the production: “At the heart of this amusing and poignant play are the changes in the two characters as they deal differently with feelings of guilt and try to realise their true desires. George is the nervy one, telling little lies, claiming he has two children when he actually has three, 'because it would make me seem less married.’ He’s a bit of a heel, really, horribly telling Doris when she arrives pregnant (and about to give birth) that she looks like a "frigate in full sail. Doris is the down-to-earth, pragmatic one, looking the affair straight in the eye. She emerges from housewifely concerns, through the liberation of education, to becoming successful entrepreneur. It is as if the couple have come together at a crossroads and swapped destinations”

Ned Sproston Ned Sproston (Image: Bingley Little Theatre)

For Button, the casting of Kordowicz and Sproston is inspired – there in the on-stage chemistry. Mervyn concludes: “Never for a moment do these two fine actors lose the closeness of the relationship, responding to every nuance of changing moods”

BLT is confident that Same Time, Next Year is the ideal play to launch the new season – a great comedy from an author with a great track-record in writing TV sitcoms. Audiences are guaranteed that the laughs come thick and fast! The darker, largely unexplored side of the story is of course that of the couple’s deceived spouses at home. The play offers some note of reassurance at the end, so we can all go home with consciences somewhat cleansed after all.

Same Time, Next Year runs at Bingley Arts Centre from Monday, September 9 to Saturday, September 14. Seats may be reserved online (www.bingleyartscentre.co.uk) or at the box office, open from 10am to 1pm weekdays (Tel: 01274 567983).