BINGLEY Little Theatre's next production is The Kitchen Sink - a “gripping comedy” by Tom Wells.

Says David Kirk at BLT: “The best plays can be about the smallest things. While so much drama focuses, rightly, on events of personal or political magnitude, Tom Wells takes as his deceptively small-scale focus four members of a largely happy family whose lives all require a gentle change of gear.

“The result is comic, poignant and utterly gripping.The title is a crafty allusion to Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and, of course, a certain genre of British playwriting. Kath (Diane Todd), Martin (Anthony Gilmartin) Sophie (Hannah Wilkinson) and Billy (Sam Perkins) aren’t angry, though - just quietly anxious that their home in Withernsea on the Yorkshire coast is in the middle of a rapidly contracting landscape of unskilled jobs that, for generations, have been performed with love and pride. As spring turns into summer, something’s got to give.”

Adds director James Boothman: “Kath is the frazzled hub of the family, fond of her experiments with couscous but infuriated with the dodgy plumbing, attacking it with a hammer for occasional emphasis. Billy has a lovable gaucheness and Sophie is an emotionally reticent young woman on the brink of brave choices. The family at its centre is suffering from hard recessionary times. Give or take one or two minor references, they could be living in any period over the last 30 years or so. Father Martin’s milk float is held together by devotion and sticky tape, while sales are declining fast in the face of supermarket competition. Devoted wife, Kath, can generally see the bright side and she needs to, as adversity hits the family like a rampaging plague.

“Somehow though, Wells manages to lighten the atmosphere with some tremendous one-liners. BLT is certain that this laugh-out-loud comedy will be a hit with audiences.”

* The Kitchen Sink is at Bingley Arts Centre, May 20-25. Visit bingleyartscentre.co.uk or call (01274) 567983.