FROM far and wide four generations of the Randolph family gather for a Golden Wedding celebration. What follows is comedy and drama combined, the tears and laughter of many a family reunion.

'Dear Octopus' - this week's enthralling play from St Joseph's Players - gets to the tangled heart of an oft-buoyant, sometime melancholy brood.

Joan Doorey and John Brian Griffin play the 50-year couple, the staunch matriarch's wisdom making the weekend a momentous occasion as her scattered offspring regain the security of home and a new sense of purpose.

There is Belle (Josie Evans), widowed and still pining over her first love, the solidly, middle-aged Margery (Barbara Mayers), jovial philanderer Kenneth (Colin Magenty), eccentric spinster Hilda (Pauline Dobbs), tragic Cynthia (Linda Sargent), man-about-town Nicholas (David Dunlop), widow Edna (Joanna Yates) and her son Hugh (Austin Hutchinson) and daughter-in-law Laurel (Angela Grime).

Children are played by Michael Evans, Katy Jones, Jenna Christopherson, Alex Doorey and Harriet Gill. And always, comfortingly, in the background are companion Fenny (Jenny Hampson), long-serving Nanny (Mary Roach) and the maid Gertrude (Jenny Shaw).

Doreen Johnson directs it beautifully. A big cast, a big play and a superb set giving us special moments of comedy, romance, happiness and depression.

Music is provided by a string quartet of local students...David Bamford, Andrew Hampson, Simon Jenkinson and Susan Hancock.

The show ends a four-night run on September 20.

The company switch to the seaside next for the riotous comedy 'Good Old Summertime' (October 15-18).

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.