The fragility of family ties can be sorely tested at parties, when celebrations bring out the best or the worse in the relationships that hold loved ones (and hard-to-love ones) together.

Director Stephen Taylor production of The Time of my Life for Teddington Theatre Club left an acid-drop taste of what happens when these bonds are stretched beyond their elastic limits.

Alan Ayckbourn's wry comedy flashes back and forth around the central event of the Stratton matriarch's 54th Birthday. Set in Alan Corbett's rag-rolled pastiche of a kitschy Italian restaurant, the flaws and fractures of the family fortunes are excruciatingly revealed.

Heather Hodgson gave a strong performance as the self-opinionated mother, Laura, whose homespun prejudices erode the lives of her family. She is a "blunt tough woman" in the words of her husband, the gruff Gerry, played by John Roth with a broad balance of geniality and irascibility.

Jeremy Gill as the adulterous elder son, Glyn, treated his timid wife Stephanie (Ruth Hutchinson) with the tenderness of coarse sandpaper, so that one felt like cheering when a new life brought out her hidden self-assurance.

The younger son, Adam, played with bemused charm by Paul Grimwood, gradually allows himself to be suffocated into insignificance by Laura's smother love.

Julie Davis shone (and was constant to the Wirral accent) in her portrayal of Maureen, his girlfriend, straightforward, sweet and sensual, but regarded by Laura as exotic under-life.

A stand-in, who looked remarkably like the director, gleefully played the restaurateur and all his bouquet-garni of waiters as they frantically tried to soften the blows between kick and kin!

Mark Aspen