“Spend 75 minutes with Liz Richardson inside her family home in Cumbria, and leave asking “What is home to me? And what is my relationship to it?”
Stellar performer Liz Richardson investigates what it means to claim where one is from in this intimate one woman show. Revisiting her cosy childhood home, Liz sets out to investigate why she’s never felt that she belonged to Cumbria. Through moody teenage diary entries, and catch ups with old friends, the play transcends time, detailing the intergenerational, evolving thoughts about belonging.
The play has some hilarious anecdotes, including a distinctively teenage experience of Liz’s jelly bra inserts popping out onto the dance floor at prom. She also mimics her childhood bully at one point, choosing to regard his taunts as ‘witty’ rather than lament about them. This vulnerability, this ability to laugh at herself, is what makes this play so special. Liz presents herself truthfully, with a kind of ‘no nonsense’ approach. This is emphasised by talking to the audience informally, like an old friend, wearing her everyday attire, utilising house lights at points, and her telling us every part of the play that she dramatised for effect at the end.
Local’s structure can sometimes feel confused, but I actually think this is an excellent choice. This is because the play isn’t concerned with finding all of the answers to every worry, but rather it picks ideas up and puts them down again, it presents them in a way that affirms to the audience that being messy and chaotic is just part of the human condition, and we are all experiencing the same things. Even her investigation ends up being put to the side, in favour of deeper, personal yet universal revelations.
The writing is beautiful, with poetic ruminations on the landscape of Cumbria, and raw rants of existential terror. The pace of the show feels laidback, until everything becomes too overwhelming all at once in a flamenco-turned-breakdown scene. This reflects the manifesting, the bubbling of Liz’s anxiety in a way that feels true to life.
The set by Lizzy Leech was, although perhaps slightly over cluttered (I don’t believe all of it was needed), a great touch, acting as a cosy, comforting time capsule from the early 90s. The warm fairy lights and restful fabrics lured us into a false sense of soundness, which made the metatheatrical reveal of the Lowry’s black box theatre become all the more jarring, after Liz rips the set down in frantic panic. This was an excellent choice. It emphasised Liz’s desire to be real with the audience, and it physically made me gasp with its effectiveness. An incredible image.
The use of projection, designed by TripleDotMakers, was also a highlight for me. From views of the mountains out of train windows, to stills of the beach, the projections really captured a sense of nostalgia, for a place I’d never even visited. The projected settings were dreamlike and liminal in a way that really aided Liz in creating a strong sense of place.
Local is a vulnerable, messy one woman show which creates, for 75 minutes, a space where a group of people can sit in reality together, acknowledge its joy and difficulty and say, as Liz does to her daughter Eve, “It’s okay.” It is currently on its Northern tour, running until 13th June 2025.