Felixstowe, Falkirk and perhaps a few places in between – that’s Tryst's spring itinerary as they prepare to take their new full-length play on the road.

Staging Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness has been a long-term ambition of the club’s Alan Clark.

“It was written in the early 1990s, soon after Terry Waite and Brian Keenan were released from captivity. I’ve seen it many times since then, both amateur and professional productions, and such is the strength of the writing and characterisation that it never fails to move.

“The opportunity came along to do it in May with Brian Paterson and Jim Allan, two gifted actors who are perfect for their parts, so I grabbed the chance with both hands.”

For those who don’t know the play, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me concerns three men who find themselves taken hostage and chained up together in a Beirut cell in 1989.

They are simultaneously terrified, powerless, angry and bored. So how do they survive and how do they deal with the very real prospect of going insane?

The play - heartrendingly compassionate, tenderly tragic but also uproariously funny - explores their daily crisis and man’s inhumanity to man, and how in the midst of the horror they find strength from communication, humour and faith.

Brian plays Edward, an Irish journalist. Jim is Michael, an English professor. And Alan plays Adam, an American doctor who has been incarcerated the longest.

Brian says the guys are suffering for their art!

“Alan and I are normally clean-shaven, but for authenticity and since there isn’t a barber in the cell, we decided to grow beards. We haven’t shaved or had our hair cut since February, so by May we’ll be transformed into Robinson Crusoe lookalikes. We also thought we should stop washing, but our wives drew the line at that!”

Jim is looking forward to playing a Professor of Old and Middle English.

“It’ll be quite a change for me, as I come from a mathematics background where Old Norse legends didn’t feature. But the character and I do have one thing in common: we both enjoy cooking. Michael is taken hostage while out buying pears for his pear flan. The secret of my pear flan is a pinch of ginger and cinnamon.”

Tryst are staging the play for one night in Falkirk Town Hall on Saturday May 23 at 7.30pm, and are entering it in the Eastern Division full-length festival. They then fly down to Felixstowe to perform the following night in the town’s week-long festival and thereafter are planning other Scottish venues.

Tickets for May 23 in Falkirk Town Hall - £7 and £5 (concessions) – are available from the Tryst Box Office on 01324 715886.