WE all like a good ghost story to send a thrill of shivers down our spine and remind us our own heart is still going strong.

But Life and Beth is not a conventional spooky tale – it’s more a celebration of freedom from the bonds of human relationships which binds us all together.

The light-hearted comedy centres on the newly-widowed Beth and her pedant husband Gordon, who despite his obsession for safety tumbled from a ladder at work ending their 33-year-old marriage. Or so Beth thought.

After a visit from a vicar, who was more of a sex pest than holy man of the cloth, the late health and safety officer makes a re-appearance at the dinner table, which sends Beth into a spin.

She wants to be free telling him his death was an “end of a chapter. If you stay fixed in one spot in a way you die too”.

The third play in trilogy written by Sir Alan Ayckbourn’s “Things that go bump in the night” season, this is production which is both humorous and touching when we too think about the themes of closure and family relationships.

The drunken sobbing sister-in-law, the equally irritating son and his morbid mute girlfriend are characters we have all seen before but this is a charming play, which will strike a chord with anybody who, like Beth, yearns to shake off the shackles of the past.

Lynn Brown