BOOKED OUT (Future Voices/Southwark Playhouse)

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA6qkQhiQf8

Available until: Unknown

Future Voices is an annual project run by Southwark Playhouse. Playwrights spend eight months working with students aged 14-18, with the aim of each student writing a short play. Usually, these plays are performed at the Southwark Playhouse. This year, a certain virus had other ideas so the actors filmed the plays at home, using Zoom and iPhones. The plays have been put on youtube and on the Southwark Playhouse website (and I’m sure the last thing they want is some actor/writer giving his opinion, but you just can’t shut me up sometimes).

This first play is by Aimee Brown. The central character is Francesca Rosa Brown, played by Jessica Hardwick. She’s at the local library and she has a job to do. The lovely librarian (Eva Fontaine) wants to keep the library quiet so everyone can concentrate, but that’s not always possible when Francesca is there.

There is so much more to the play than that, but I don’t want to give too much away. Aimee Brown holds our interest throughout, making revelation after revelation. We think we know what’s going on, but Aimee cleverly spins everything round, delivering shocks which are unexpected but make perfect sense. I don’t know about you, but I like a good shock now and then. Francesca is a really good character – she’s intriguing, amusing and very likeable, but she’s not too perfect (don’t perfect people just drive you mad?) and I ended up having a lot of sympathy for her. I’m really intrigued by the relationship between Francesca and the librarian and I would have loved to know more, but maybe that’s just me being nosy again. This play has comedy, tragedy and drama, all in one nine-minute play. And unlike me, Aimee doesn’t overdo the drama.

This showcase is all about the writing so I’ll focus on that rather than the acting. Except that I will just contradict myself (I do that a lot) by saying the actors are all really good and tell this story really well. There’s also some brilliant direction from Grace Gibson – the actors are never onscreen together, but it’s put together in such a way that it didn’t occur to me till later. Even with the limitations of lockdown, the Southwark Playhouse have assembled a cast and crew who really do justice to the script.

There was one sentence that really stood out to me (actually, there was more than one, but I’ll just talk about one). I can’t say which one as that would give far too much away, but it’s the part about a lack of funding. It is just SO TRUE and it’s really good to see this stated. It’s not directly part of the story, but it is very relevant. (I’m being cryptic. I know I am and I’m so annoying when I’m cryptic, but I don’t want to blurt out the whole story.)

Anyway, I really enjoyed this and I’m looking forward to watching the others.