Rating: ★★★★★
Venue: The Hope Theatre, London
It’s 1985. Above a bookshop in King’s Cross, volunteers answer calls from across the country. There's been a vicious queer-bashing in Leeds, a young man in Bristol dreads his HIV test, and a breathless voice really wants to know what they're wearing.
For Lou, Joan, Nana and Jackie, it’s just another shift. Battling phone line outages, understaffing, and vanishing pens, these four lesbians are determined to answer the call to connect their divided community.
Switchboard is the national LGBTQIA+ support line; founded in 1974 as ‘London Gay Switchboard’ and is almost exclusively volunteer run. The Switchboard Project is set in the aftermath of the helplines' first rebrand to London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard. Joan, Lou, Jackie, and Nana are four of the few female volunteers at Switchboard. We follow them through some shifts on the helpline, balancing callers with office politics and Joan’s intense passion for women’s issues that borders on radical feminism, as well as sizing up the new girl and wondering where on earth Nana disappeared to and what’s going on with her now that she’s back?
After two workshop performances at Camden People’s theatre in 2024, the show has opened its first official run of the fully staged production at The Hope Theatre in Islington, an intimate space that holds the atmosphere of this piece perfectly. The show has had an overwhelming response so far, the original two week run selling out so quickly that it was extended by a week before even opening.
Co-written by Molly Byrne and Ella Pound, the script achieves a perfect balance between sensitively handled heavy content and comedy. This play is the type of show that is not driven by the plot, but by the relationships between the characters, and the audience feel like a fly on the wall watching the office drama unfold. Every moment of the show is so clearly crafted from true inspiration, real peoples’ stories taken from the archives and then immortalised on stage.
Dan Southwell’s set design leans nicely into the intimacy of both the space and the piece, creating the shell in which the very special atmosphere of this show can be built. In such a small space, there’s always the risk of the stage feeling too cluttered or too much movement at once, but Molly Byrne’s thoughtful direction made sure that was never the case.
All four characters were very well-rounded and brought to life by an incredibly talented cast, Áine McNamara portrays that ‘new girl’ feeling that we all know too well, and complements nicely with Fatima Abdullahi’s sturdy, stoic Lou; both of whom gave standout performances. Fatima’s performance as Lou broke my heart as she creates a character that is steady and dependable throughout, before revealing her devastating reality.
This show is one of importance and brings forgotten pieces of history into the light. If you are able to snag a ticket to this almost sold-out run then definitely don’t miss it. There are content warnings available on the website linked below, and please note that as a pub theatre, there is no step-free access.
You can book tickets to see The Switchboard Project, here.
Review by Rachel
**photo credit: Ella Muir**
No comments