Guest Blog: George Warren On CUCKOO at Soho Theatre

As a producer, I read a lot of scripts. Plenty of them are very good but, given the limited resources I have, and the amount of blood, sweat and tears that goes into a show, something really needs to connect for me to take the journey to production.

When Lisa Carroll sent me Cuckoo three years ago, it was one of the rare plays where I barely had to think before diving in.

Reading it was a breath of air. From the intensity of the characters to the vivid conjuring of the pint-sized, foul-mouthed cannonball that is the central character Iona, Cuckoo was set apart from anything else I've read.

The specificity of Crumlin, the insular Dublin suburb where the play is set, lends everything an authenticity and weirdness that is intoxicating.

This is Lisa Carroll's first professional full-length production and there is often something about a first work from a new playwright that stands out. They might write more accomplished, polished pieces in the coming years, but that first moment where their voice is heard is my favourite, because it is often the most unfiltered expression of their peculiar worldview.

This piece feels simultaneously grounded in reality and wonderfully fantastical - as if Carroll has taken an extremely accurate line drawing of the world and traced over it in fluorescent Sharpie.

At heart, the play is one that tackles some themes familiar to Irish writing, but it completely has its finger on the pulse of modern life and our rapidly changing world. Cuckoo questions ideas of identity and escape to ask if you can ever really escape your background in a world getting smaller and smaller.

As with almost everything currently, it is impossible not to view these questions through the prism of Brexit and the cataclysmic change that may bring. Iona and Pingu dream, like many do, of escaping to London, but their ability to do so, and the capacity of London to welcome them, is in question like rarely before.

Cuckoo sees a group of characters trying on different personalities to present to the world, but that world is a confusing, contradictory place. In some ways we have so much power in 2018 to define our own identities or even to split our personas into a thousand curated segments.

Yet, in other ways, we are increasingly unable to escape our past, with each action or transgression documented and stored on the Cloud.

For Iona, the dream of escaping to London is similar to her dream of being a social media influencer - both are a move to break with her past, but also a way to rewrite her history, to add a spin on her miserable life in Crumlin. All of the characters in Cuckoo, on the verge of becoming adult, are struggling to accept their true selves, and their journey through the play hinges on their ability or failure to do so.

My main hope for the audience coming away from Cuckoo is that they find it funny; theatre that is relevant should be funny because our world is such a ridiculous one. I have an admittedly skewed sense of humour (my last comedy was about killing homeless people), but I laugh out loud every time I read the play - from the funny situations to the fantastic, delusional, and biting one-liners.

This is a play ready to be let loose. Our fantastic director Debbie Hannan and her talented team are bursting with ideas, and the audience should be prepared for a bizarre theme park with a kernel of truth at the centre. This production is going to be one wild ride.

Cuckoo at Soho Theatre 13 November-8 December

Photo credit: David Gill

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