Time and Tide waits in the Cromer Cafe

Posted on 12th October 2022

Relish Theatre’s play has been touring across East Anglia throughout October, and will continue on manoeuvres after this performance at the Corn Hall, finishing up with a brief run at the Theatre Royal. It’s a rare pleasure to see a London based theatre company tour our county so extensively, and rarer still to see a play that focuses on the challenges of living on the North Norfolk coast, in a community struggling with change.

Tide and Tide debuted at London’s Park Theatre to great acclaim, but surely takes on a whole new meaning staged here, where it was set. Although centred on a sad café in Cromer, this intimate drama could have been centred in any number of small towns in Norfolk – including Diss – where big business and franchised chains creep in and slowly strip the place of its character. Written by East Anglian James McDermott, he is unusually sensitive to the dilemma facing people caught in the pinchers of change. Be that Erin Geraghty’s May, with her failing café, Paul Lavers’s Ken with his failing bread run, Ishmel Bridgeman’s Daz, who wants everything to stay the same, or Josh Barrow’s Nemo, who isn’t sure what he wants.

Director Rob Ellis ensured the pace zipped along, and while the message was painted with a broad brush, the heart of the play was resolutely in the right place. Deftly avoiding easy answers, McDermott examines unrequited love, unfulfilled ambitions, and unrealised dreams in a comic, yet serious minded fashion. The uneasy affection the two young lads share is particularly well realised, with a refreshingly candid approach to a LGBT relationship. The bubbling sexuality of young folk is rarely straightforward, whatever their inclinations, and McDermott does well to remind us of that.