LOSS & HOPE: WE HAVE SINNED (Forty-Five North)*****

 

 By Louise

Link: https://www.forty-fivenorth.com/loss-hope-we-have-sinned 

Available until: Unknown

We have Sinned is the first in a series of three plays in the Loss & Hope Series. They are all short audio plays, but I haven’t listened to the others so I’m not sure if there’s a common theme.

We Have Sinned is about a fifteen year old girl called Esther who goes to an all-girls Catholic school. She wants to be good, but she can’t help getting into trouble so she usually has quite a lot to say when she goes to Confession.

Esther meets a boy called David and she really likes him. The feelings she is having for him feel like they might be sins because it’s against everything she’s been taught, but she’s not sure.

We Have Sinned is about some very serious and adult issues, but director Grace Cordell gives the play a very light touch to begin with. It’s not really a comedy, but there is a lot of humour in the play because Esther is such a funny, likeable character. It could have been told in a more serious way with Esther being more subdued, but I’m not sure she really would be like that so it’s like the tone of the play is following Esther’s mood. At the start, Esther is enjoying her life and she’s quite mischievous and cheeky, but later on, as she starts to question herself and her life, the play becomes more serious and less lively.

I also really like the way Ms Cordell has used sound in this play. Sometimes it’s music, sometimes it’s another sound, but it all helps to create a sense of place. Although Esther is in the confession booth, she is talking about the things that have happened to her and the sounds help take you out of the confession booth and into the moment when the events actually happened. This makes the story feel a lot more immediate. The sound design, music and also the editing is by Tom Foskett-Barnes.

The playwright is Tife Kusoro and she has created a really lovely character for this monologue. Esther is a lot of fun and quite naughty, but she is also a really nice girl. Although she gets into trouble a lot and she is very curious about all the things she’s not allowed to do (like most teenage girls), she does respect her religion and that’s part of who she is. The story is made up of a series of scenes and they all work really well together with one scene leading into the next one and creating a complete story. It is really engrossing and I became invested in it straight away.

The monologue is performed by Seraphina Beh and she is very talented. I love the way she has created Esther’s personality. She makes her seem like so much fun and a really nice person who doesn’t want to hurt anyone and her mischievousness is really infectious. I think she would probably find me quite boring, but I would love to be friends with her. She treats the confession booth as a sort of friend and that is really sweet. Ms Beh also has to imitate some of the other characters Esther talks to and she is really good at this. She is so good at playing David, I actually double-checked the page to see if there was a male actor in it.

This is a really good play for lots of reasons. The writing, performance and direction are obviously really brilliant, but I also love the way Esther is actually quite a conventional teenage girl in lots of ways. Some people expect very religious people to be very calm and mature and well-behaved and this play shows they are individuals just like everyone else and I think it is important for everyone to know that. I think the way the play handles adult subjects is also really helpful and informative.

 

We Have Sinned is brilliant and it is definitely worth listening to.