Rick Mokler retired last month after 20 years as a director, instructor and later the head of the Theater Department at SBCC. A great number of local actors worked under his tutelage, and Santa Barbara theatergoers, whether they know it or not, continue to encounter his graduates at Center Stage, Rubicon and beyond. So his swan song, Alan Ayckbourn’s “Time of My Life,” can only take on added depth with its comic examination of time, nostalgia, memory and appreciating the here and now.
“Time” dates from 1992, and is one of Ayckbourn’s lesser-known plays, yet it employs the same kind of time-jumping formalism as “Absurd Person Singular” and “Bedroom Farce.” The center of events is a 54th birthday dinner at a favorite Chinese restaurant for Stratton family matriarch Laura (Katie Thatcher), surrounded by her husband Gerry (Jon Koons), her son Glyn (Brian Harwell) and his wife Stephanie (Leesa Beck), and her other, younger son Adam (Josh Jenkins) and his date Maureen (Marisa Welby-Maiani).