My first job was at Butlins. At the tender age of 18 I spent three months washing glasses in the Pig and Whistle bar at Butlins Minehead for the princely sum of £7 14s 6d a week. Lee Mattinson's play Chalet Lines had Butlins as its backdrop, albeit Skegness rather than Somerset, and as the holidays approach this was a fitting play to end the summer season in London.

I can see why the play was chosen; it had five strong roles for women and the need for just one set. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the cast and director Sara Reimers, I don't think the material really cut the mustard. One must ask why a young, gay, male playwright (I'm making an assumption here) should write about a family of Geordie women. He then decided that three key events in the family's life should occur, not at home, but in a holiday camp 200 miles from home, when indeed there is a much nearer Butlins at Filey just south of Scarborough. Be that as it may, we first met (most of) the family in 2010 when they had booked their favourite chalet in order to celebrate Nana Barbara's 70th birthday. At any rate, elder daughter Loretta was there accompanied by her two daughters, Abigail and Jolene. Younger daughter Paula was due to come (or was she ?). Already the hints of sibling rivalries between the two sets of sisters were starting to appear. No menfolk of course; that would only complicate matters. Husbands, boyfriends and redcoats were merely referred to in passing, so speedily in fact that I have trouble remembering any of their names.

Did I mention that they were from Newcastle ? There was probably no particular reason why they had to come from there, and the script was hardly scattered with references to Jesmond Dene and the high-level bridge. However the actresses were all required to master a passable Geordie dialect which is not the easiest, either to speak or to understand. I say this as a north-easterner myself whose grandmother was born just a stotty cake's throw away from Roker Park. Unfortunately even I was straining to pick up much of the dialogue at the beginning of the play, so I fear I may well have missed some key plot elements.

Judith Denwood made her creditable Tower debut as Nana Barbara, the matriarch, whose birthday is the reason for the family gathering. She did seem a rather old and infirm 70-year old, and was practically anchored to the sofa for the entire scene. This did, however make sense in subsequent scenes as the actress shed the years and the walking stick, initially as we regressed 14 years to 1996 and then a further 35 years to 1961.

It was only when I saw the 1961 scene, immediately following the interval, that everything started to fall into place for me. This had been presaged just before the interval when Nana Barbara appeared in her old wedding dress, looking for all the world like Miss Havisham. Now here she was a pregnant 21-year old about to get hitched (at Butlins ?) to a man who wasn't the father of the child, bullied into marriage by her overbearing mother.

Anna Dimdore gave a big blowsy performance as both Barbara's mother Edith and more centrally as the ghastly Loretta. The latter is a woman very much in charge, who resents her mother, her husband and her elder daughter, while knocking back the cava. Should I have sympathised with her sad existence ? Unfortunately there were just a few too many echoes of Viz comic's Sandra and Tracy to make this possible.

As Abigail, Loretta's elder daughter (born when Loretta was just 19 – I worked it out), Helen McGill was the one character with which one could feel some sympathy. I didn't get much of a feel for the character when older but she came into her own as the gauche 15 year-old in a sloppy jumper who only wants to perform an Elton John song at the Camp Champ Championship. Her mother, of course, wants her to be a mirror-image (“tell them you're 18 and I'm your sister”) of herself. More to Loretta's liking is younger daughter Jolene. New member Hannah van der Westhuysen gave a competent performance in the role, although it was never clear how old she was supposed to be. If Abigail was 15 in 1996, Jolene can only have been about 13, which I didn't really register. In 2010, she must have been about 27 which again didn't seem quite right.

Katie Smith did what she could with two very underwritten roles, that of Loretta's younger sister Paula in 1996 and as Edith's friend Sylvia in 1961, providing hush-hush advice about how to get an abortion. The reason for the Skegness gathering in 1996 is Paula's hen party to which Loretta and family have not specifically been invited. At least Auntie Paula sees something in the shy Abigail, to the extent of trying desperately to teach her the Macarena, in one of the play's few comic moments.

Anna William's set did manage to suggest a holiday camp chalet, although I'm sure these have been upgraded over the years (my accommodation in 1970 was nothing like that). My chief quibble was what looked for all the world like a gable window above the main door, which didn't look right for a bungalow. I do wish I could have liked the play more, but I'm afraid that the writing rather let it down. Despite the best efforts of Ms Reimers and the cast, I was left feeling a tad disappointed.

Photography by David Sprecher