HOMING PIGEONS (Future Voices/Southwark Playhouse)

 

By Aashiq

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YNEteIsF8o

Available until: Unknown

I might as well give up now. Seriously, Mia Adeboye is a teenager and they're a much better writer than me (most Mias are girls but they can be boys too so I'll go with 'they'). I am so glad I had the opportunity to watch this.

It has everything. On the surface, it’s a story about pigeons. The ones who live in London already. The new pigeons who move in (there’s a brilliant joke about that which I won’t give away, even though I’m absolutely dying to and I just woke my husband up to tell him. I don’t think he understood and he actually looked a bit cross, but it is a good joke. I just think maybe you need to be properly awake? I’ll tell him again tomorrow). But the pigeons are just what’s on the surface. This play has a deeper meaning and it’s so clever.

There are a lot of different characters, but they’re all clearly-defined. There’s the Narrator, Ekow Quartey, who speaks Mia’s words beautifully. Lois Chimmba and Jessica Clark play female pigeons, which is an incredible idea and it works. They do look like pigeons. Their interactions with the Narrator… no, I won’t tell you anything. But I think the very best comic writers are the ones who can put comedy into a serious and thoughtful play without it seeming out of place and without changing what the play fundamentally is. Mia can do this already and it’s not fair.

There are also three boys, having a chat – it’s just like one of those laddish conversations I tend to get left out of because I’m not laddish enough. Finally, Jude Akuwudike appears as an older man called Hubert, who knows and loves the pigeons. It’s a wide range of characters from different backgrounds with different stories to tell, but they’re all believable.

The soundtrack is also great and there are some gorgeous shots of clouds and London which really set the scene. I’m sure this was filmed in a socially distanced way because I really don’t think the Southwark Playhouse are idiots, but director Grace Gibson makes it look like it wasn’t. I love Zoom plays and next time I see Shakespeare on a stage in person, it’s going to be so weird. But Homing Pigeons is about the outside world and the potential for freedom (even if it can’t be achieved) so it needed and deserved to be filmed in this way.

And… I probably shouldn’t say this, but I can’t resist and it is true and I think it’s clear I love this play and I’m not making fun. But I’d like to say the whole play dovetails so nicely. Coo!