Writer: Liz Richardson
Director: Amy Hailwood
“Hello everyone!” From the moment Liz Richardson strides on stage, bright blue eyes inviting contact, it’s clear the Local audience is in safe hands. Ceaselessly compelling, the puckish storyteller and consummate performer delivers her latest one-woman autobiographical show on an intensely personal level, as if she’s been your best friend for life.
Born and raised in Whitehaven, near nuclear-themed Sellafield, she’s slid somewhat south to the Peak District, and with daughter Eve starting to ask questions about family history, Richardson is determined to “address the sticking point about not owning where I’m from”. She attempts this by inviting the audience to join her in reflecting on her upbringing in West Cumbria, which until now she’s been happy to let non-local acquaintances assume is part of the famous Lake District.
Ensconced onstage in what looks like a floral fabric pillow fort – the upholstery of 1990s girlish bedrooms – and using back-projected local vistas and railway-passing scenes, Richardson evokes cosy, slightly geeky (or ‘boffy’ as the locals put it: short for boffin) family life in the rugged backwater with its “brown sea… gorse… sewage plants… radioactive ponds… egrets”.
Richardson refers to and canvasses those who’ve most influenced her progress, primarily her hymn-belting, power station-working Dad and loquacious, more-Irish-when-tipsy Mum, as well as an array of schoolmates ranging from the supportive Alexa (not the AI device), who “makes you feel like your problems are justified”, to the teasing twerps that call her “Elizaboff”. She paints a loving but slightly disappointing background: while the scenery’s beautiful, the scene isn’t nearly happening enough, certainly in her teen years.
These are amusingly illuminated by readings from neon-bright, thickly stickered diaries, Richardson’s, and those unearthed by grown-up friends. Aside from revealing fixations on improvement, ten guinea pig-related resolutions at a time, “a lack of feeling proud is apparent”: one journal features the address ‘Boring Avenue, Nolife Town’. Likewise, the ex-headmaster at her crumbling comp speaks of subdued ambition – “it was definitely not cool to do well” – and battered facilities: “half the chairs had no backs from being thrown around”.
Surviving in Richardson’s clique of remaindered boffs meant retreating into the Music Centre, playing the recorder and creating demented choreography: their surreal war dance is one of the show’s highlights.
As the play proceeds to episodes around the deaths of some of Richardson’s contemporaries in the town – she isn’t the least bit elderly, so these hit hard – there’s real revelation, melancholy and near-breakdown. She realises viscerally that it’s people that make pride in places, and growing up means accepting the fact that the environments they create face inevitable decay and replacement. “Rip the plaster off; that’s what it’s about.”
In being so upfront about her own responses to belonging, Richardson succeeds in creating a space where people can ponder their own experiences, which helps explain the many teary sniffles in the audience. Local has had long, acclaimed runs in northern venues like The Lowry, but the play possibly lands a little differently in London, more densely populated with those that have undergone uprooting and dislocation. Richardson herself refers to her ‘London years’ in semi-traumatised tones: evidently troubling things happened to her there.
This really is a play for one and all. Younger viewers will no doubt identify with Richardson’s unabashed re-telling of profoundly embarrassing incidents – “Making a tit of myself – while older audience members will certainly relate to feelings of shuffling along the perch of life and being forced to contemplate their own toppling off, as well as the yearning for youth. “I’m 21 inside,” yells Richardson as she dances frenetically.
Much credit must go to Richardson’s co-conspirators for their admirable production elements: the gentle guitar-strummed soundscapes of Pierre Flasse, melded with evocative early nineties tunes from The Cure, The Stone Roses and EMF, Tripledot Makers’ camouflaged screen and stage-flooding projections, Lizzy Leech’s clever, destructible set, and Arnim Friess’s moody lighting, including an impressive fuchsia-hued fugue.
Moving, funny and achingly honest, Local is especially recommended for inter-generational family attendance, which is likely to result in greater understanding all round.
Runs until 1 August 2026
