Writers: Sonali Bhattacharya, Debbie Hannan, Charlie Josephine, Kayleigh Llewellyn, Errol McGlashan, Neetu Singh, Chris Sonnex, Naomi Westerman and Roy Williams
Director: Chris Sonnex
Cardboard Citizens has gathered some of the UK’s most inspiring writers to reflect on the broad impacts and meaning of homelessness in its new digital anthology series More Than One Story composed of nine individual monologues running between 4 and 10 minutes released weekly. This compendium of stories is funny and frank about the experience of homelessness, temporary accommodation and the complex reasons why people may suddenly find themselves unable to stay in their homes including enforced evictions and domestic violence.
One of the most important involves exactly that scenario, staged as a clever 10-minute stand-up routine by Kayleigh Llewellyn who disarmingly opens with the creation of her character’s perfect Spice Girls-filled loft bedroom in what seems like a happy childhood home. Delivered with considerable charisma by Natasha Sparks, Llewellyn’s Boiling Frogs is a brilliantly paced piece that warms the audience to the speaker before putting down the microphone to explore the impacts of abuse on young children and their mother, and how it leads to removal from the family home. Sparks finds an honesty and authenticity in the delivery that is hugely engaging, capturing the stand-up style which makes the emotional impact even greater when it comes.
Sonali Bhattacharya’s piece Sabbir at the Estate Agents is also affecting, a teenage boy explaining the racially and financially motivated eviction of his family by their landlord revealed during a dismissive conversation with an estate agent. There are some very tender moments as the young man explains the English phrases that his mother practices in advance, and as this brief tale unfolds, performer Mansa Ahmed reveals the exasperation of a system stacked against them and the misconceptions about immigration that affect this family – another unacknowledged route into homelessness that is full of pathos.
The inadequacies of temporary accommodation fuels Neefu Singh’s fiery monologue The Surviving Room with a family spending many years in a tiny shared space while Debbie Hannan’s Snakes and Landlords challenges pre-conceptions of homelessness in a focus group setting where only her protagonist played by Yvonne Wickham has any experience of the deeply-rooted social and political causes of being ‘housing deprived’ while her fellow attendees – some of whom Wickham also plays – focus on terminology over direct action.
Errol McGlashan’s No Walls, Still Trapped is the only story to discuss someone else’s experience linking homelessness, limited social support and prison terms delivered by their cellmate, while Charlie Josephine’s sweet monologue notes the misgendering of a narrator unable to access housing and losing potential love as a result. Roy Williams, like Bhattacharya, also explores race and homelessness in his monologue from a Big Issue seller who once had an Ozwald Boateng suit, cutting between the fantasy man he used to be and the very different life he has now.
Not all of the monologues are of equivalent quality as is expected with such a diverse scope and a pool of writers at different stages of their careers, but Cardboard Citizen’s More Than One Story does much to explore the causes and varied experiences of homelessness, offering a compassionate and thoughtful reflection on the individuality of every speaker and why it is essential to let them tell their own stories.
Available here
The Reviews Hub Score
Funny and frank
