WITTY, thought-provoking and entertaining, Christine Watkins’ new work, The Tide Tables, is a poetic and musical examination of just what happens – or doesn’t – once the tide turns, metaphorically speaking, in a woman’s life and she finds herself, literally in Elin’s case, beached.

But is Elin, alone on a beach, as washed up as she feels? In a work, piloted last week at The Courtyard, that effortlessly managed to entertain and inform simultaneously, Christine Watkins, with the help of the glorious Beach Radio Quartet on Radio 49-56 FM and the mysterious lifeguard, explored both the emotional and physical impact of menopause.

“Beneath my extraordinary skin, games are in progress,” says Elin, revealing that the strenuous beach volleyball games previously playing inside her have given way to more sedate games of Scrabble.

Featuring music by Mary Keith and Sianed Jones, The Tide Tables transformed the science of the menopause and endocrinology into an evening that fascinated and charmed as it wrapped the ‘science bit’ in an engaging entertainment. The more overtly scientific element of the piece, endocrinologist Saffron Whitehead’s brief history of HRT, struck the right, light, tone to inform without lecturing.

The Beach Radio Quartet’s barbershop songs were the perfect accompaniment, provoking both laughter and a wry recognition of the truth of their content, while Sianed Jones’s mesmerising songs created a more reflective atmosphere.

The tide, it turns out, has not left Elin high and dry, but it has changed the landscape of her life, leaving her instead to contemplate a new and potentially exciting phase.