Only a Matter of Time
From: Wednesday, 13th February 2002
To: Saturday, 23 March 2002
Our Review: 
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Synopsis
Once upon a time an Englishman met a Welshman in a field... he was there to tell him the right time. It's hard for us to imagine these days that in Victorian times Britain had a difference in time of half-an-hour from the eastern to the western extremities. The play begins with the arrival of an Englishman representing Brunel: he comes to tell the Welsh that due to railway expansion, time needs to be standardised. Plater's comedy tells of the consequences over the next 180 years. The play follows Alan's favoured method of taking deeply serious ideas and kicking them around the stage until the stuffing drops out!
Our Review:
21 February 2002
Way back when, before 1880 to be precise, the time of day wasn’t standardised across Britain, let alone the world. Clocks had been accurate enough since 1792, and this led to each locality having its own local time - the time in Wales for example, was 11 minutes later than in London! The coming of the railways accelerated the need for some synchronisation.
This was all news to me, and fascinating news at that. For Alan Plater, it was fascinating enough to inspire his writing a pair of radio plays. The reaction to those was so enthusiastic that he decided to adapt those radio plays for the stage.
Appropriately, Only a Matter of Time is set in two different times: the 19th century and the present day. In a field in Wales, progress comes up against tradition, embodied by a Welsh peasant farmer and the man from London doing a recce for the railway company. Meredith (Brendan O'Hea) and Fanshawe (Simon Walter) argue the toss as Meredith tosses hay till...
Creative
Alan Plater (Author)
John Doyle (Director)
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