Michael Abbensetts's light situation comedy Alterations, first performed in the eighty-seater London New End Theatre in1978, lets us glimpse the hectic life in the UK of the Guyanese migrant Walker as he pushes himself and others towards a 24-hour deadline on a job that could deliver him the money to start his own clothing shop in Soho.
The trouble is, the order from the white businessman Mr Nat (Colin Mace) to alter the length of a fantastic number of trousers looks too ambitious, especially since he only has two workers to help with the task and they have other things on their mind.
Buster (Gershywyn Eustache Jnr) has a wife in hospital having a baby, and Horace (Karl Collins) is determined not to miss a night out in the theatre. Walker (Arinzé Kene) is distracted by his wife Darlene (Cherrelle Skeete), who is frustrated by his lack of attention and not having money to buy groceries. There are, in addition, the phone calls he keeps trying to ignore from a white woman he is in a relationship with.
Things get more complicated with the interest Horace is showing in Darlene, but Walker is determined to deliver the goods. He pays no attention to the young, black delivery driver, Courtney (Raphel Famotibe), who argues there is little work for the young and that other ethnic groups who have worked incredibly hard to find a place in the UK still get badly treated by the white population.
The characters are distinct, and the plot line is clear without having very much depth or development.
The director, Lynette Linton, gives the show a brisk pace, and when Walker is imagining his dream shop, Frankie Bradshaw’s set swiftly modifies briefly the small workshop into something grander with the addition of lavish racks of clothes lowered from above along with displays sliding in from the side.
It’s a well-performed comic drama depicting the way ambition can generate a selfish blindness to the important things in life.