Time and Tide is a bittersweet LGBT+ coming-of-age comedy that’s already raking in stellar reviews
Josh Barrow and Elliot Liburd in Time & Tide, Park Theatre (Gail Harland)
If you’re after a wholesome and heartwarming experience this February, look no further than Time and Tide, an LGBT+ coming-of-age comedy from London’s Park Theatre.
With a script written by the East Anglia-based performance poet James McDermott, this painfully-relatable new play opened to stellar reviews and has already been longlisted for The Verity Bargate Award and the Bruntwood and Papatango Playwriting Prizes.
It’s a “splendid ensemble piece” that grapples with themes of love, sexuality, friendship and gentrification while exploring the age-old conflict between staying with the familiar and taking the leap into the unknown.
McDermott’s play is set in the fading seaside town of Cromer, where the relentless tide of Nando’s and Pret is forcing the local community to move with the times. It features a cast peopled with honest, truthful characters whose daily dramas play out in a café atop a crumbling pier.
At the centre of it all lies the surrogate mother-son relationship between café owner May (Wendy Nottingham) and gay aspiring actor Nemo (Josh Barrow), who’s about to fly the nest for university in London.
Josh Barrow and Wendy Nottingham (Gail Harland)
They’re joined by local baker Ken (Paul Easom) and Nemo’s lifelong friend Daz (Elliot Liburd), a college drop out who has no interest in life beyond the traditional template of “money, marriage, mortgage” – and can’t understand why his friend does.
“You’re going to become that fly on the wall as a member of the Norfolk community,” said director Rob Ellis. “I would imagine that a lot of people have gone through, certainly, the decision Nemo makes – when is the right time to leave home?”
Boasting bags of charm, perfect comic timing and great LGBT+ representation, critics are calling the solid five-star show “sweet, well-meaning, instantly likeable” and “funny as hell”.
Time and Tide is running until February 29 at the Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park, N4 3JP.
Standard tickets cost £18, with a discount for those aged 16 and under. Click here to book now.
