Liverpool Sound and Vision rating * * * *
Cast: Barbara Cunningham, Neil Summerville.
How far will you go for friendship? If you are fortunate enough to have that one person in your life to whom you would go to the end of the Earth for just to make them smile, then yours is perhaps the most blessed of lives, a truth of existence is that we cannot go through our time here on Earth without searching for that one person to make us happy, neither are we immune to wanting to find another in which we might be able to bring happiness too. It is a Friendship Forever in which our lives are balanced upon.
The final play of The Bench trilogy, Friendship Forever, sees Barbara and Stuart rekindle a once thought lost bond via social media; their lives have changed, society has altered its opinions somewhat since they were a small boy and girl, but the circumstances of their attachment in youth has never been distorted, just transformed as life gave way to other pursuits.
Friendship Forever is a touching short play, an examination in 30 minutes of what companionship means, fighting battles together, sometimes facing the world alone, but never allowing yourself to lose that one person who means more than life, never forgoing contact, not completely, because in the end the person that understands you best is the one that you have been thinking about all the time.
What David Armstrong brings to the question of friendship is how others may try to see what makes it tick, and possibly do their unconscious best to undermine it. However, as Mr. Armstrong shows with great deftness and fluidity of pen is that when two people are that close in thought and mind, nothing can take the friendship away, only time can interrupt its progression.
For Barbara and Stuart, time has had different attitudes to the way they think, the person they are, and yet they remain committed to each other, with Stuart displaying the most considered of operations in which to make sure Barbara is able to be happy.
A thoughtful play, one that grasps and frames the memory of friendship without borders or rules, it is a place that anybody could wish they had, a place in our cluttered relationship with the world that we could have a Friendship Forever.
Ian D. Hall