‘We are here for a good time, not a long time’. Hope has just moved from her home town to the dazzling lights of London (her shock at being charged a fiver for a coke in a pub is palpable). Navigating the tap-in/tap-out and the joys of the Northern line via Made in Chelsea, life is overwhelming, are the cat-calls from men twice her age a compliment or an insult?
She is enjoying her job at Dino World, as much as one can until her colleague Darren Smith, who is as predatory as a T-Rex, assaults her friend. Hope stands up for friend after all Daz did put his hand in her mate’s pants, and as a result she is asked to ‘seek employment elsewhere so you can have a fresh start’. Suddenly she has transitioned from being hopeful to hopeless.
Hope goes on a date. And whilst she is not invested in intimacy ‘my vagina is so dry I have to go and moisturise it’ somehow she ends up having sex and it’s a horrible experience; on reflection was she coerced into it? Is she having a #metoo moment?
Charlotte Anne-Tilley is a tour de force, executing each persona of Hope with skill and care. There is lots of thought provoking questions and long after the curtain has dropped rhetoric was still running through my mind. The set is simple (however I watched this performance streamed) and I feel that that staging was at a minimum to enable the audience to fully immerse themselves. There is a lot of content and at times keeping track of the interloping themes was a task. That said, I would urge everyone to see this piece before it ends, it covers every theme that is prevalent in these current times.
For all of the hard hitting topics, just like life, we leave Hope’s life with just that, a glimmer of hope.
The tickets for the live stream are here.
Review: Kay Johal