Yours Sincerely – Soho Theatre, London

Writer: Will Jackson

Directors: Anna Himali Howard and Lucy Bird

After accidentally stealing 300 second class stamps, drama graduate Will Jackson elected to put them to use by reviving the lost art of letter writing. The letters he wrote, and the replies he received, form the basis of his hilarious one-man show Yours Sincerely.

From missives to his ex-housemate to the marketing departments of chocolate companies and department stores, Jackson’s ebullience shines through each interaction. An early seam involves him tracking down his first crush, another boy who played violin until an over-boisterous interaction resulted in a broken arm. The resulting flirtation, and its abrupt conclusion, encapsulate the combination of comedy and pathos that peppers Jackson’s story.

Jackson occasionally writes in other personas – most notably a sequence in which, in the guise of a nine-year-old boy, he proposes to John Lewis a wacky version of the company’s trademark Christmas adverts. But the strength of the show comes with his interactions with those around him, from a Post-It war with his current flatmate to a reluctance to disclose that a lump on his testicle is resulting in an increasingly stressful series of scans.

Whenever reality threatens to send the show into too serious a tone, Jackson throws in a series of hilariously performed lip sync numbers, allowing the darker moments – including a thank you note to the stranger who helped him escape a knife-wielding mugger – to illuminate, rather than darken, his life story.

Within the show, Jackson is presented with the possibility of turning his correspondence into a book. Choosing instead to convert his work into a show is a much wiser course of action, for the best part of this epistolary hour is Jackson himself, an engaging and warm personality that would struggle to have quite the same charming effect on the page instead of the stage.

Continues until 19 March 2022