LIVING Pretty is the story of one man's journey from Jamaica to Leeds, turned into a play by his great friend.

It is a labour of love for Tadcaster-born writer, broadcaster and director Ray Brown, whose production for Normal Productions visits The Studio at York Theatre Royal from Thursday to Saturday at 7.45pm.

Twenty years ago, Ray moved into a Victorian terrace in Kirkstall. Living in that street was Alfred Williams, a Jamaican who had come over to Britain in the 1950s and had worked at a bottling factory in Leeds. Living Pretty is Alfred's story. "We became great friends," recalls Ray. "In Jamaica he had started working when he was five or six and by the age of seven he was out at seven in the morning, travelling 12 miles each day on foot and horseback to feed the family's animals. In his early teens he left home to work on a plantation and worked his way up to being a tenant farmer over 20 years.

"But doing all that work there was no time for him to be educated; he came from the sticky end of the sticky end of life and yet he was a very intelligent man with all that experience to call on."

Upon his retirement, Alfred took on an allotment, and it was there - or in Ray's kitchen - that the friends would meet. "I can only think of two times in 16-17 years of knowing him when there was no laughter. After I moved from the street, we would still talk to each other five days a week," Ray says.

He first turned Alfred's life story - not least his struggles with reading and writing - into a book entitled To Live It Is To Know in 1989. When Alfred died in 1997, Ray was the only white coffin bearer at his funeral, and later Ray set about updating the book, which was republished last year.

Ray's stage adaptation casts Leeds actor Everal A Walsh, who grew up close to Alfred's allotment, as Alfred from the age of six to 79. He takes 16 more roles, such as mother, father and teacher, performing alongside singer Pauline Tomlin.

Analysing his play, Ray says: "On one level, it's about an old black man who has had his life and is dying of cancer and is enjoying reminiscing, but it's also about all of us and the cards we are dealt in life."

Box office: 01904 623568.

Updated: 16:17 Thursday, April 07, 2005