Tokens of Affection at Waterloo East Theatre

Tokens of Affection, the riveting play by award winning playwright, Maureen Lawrence, has its London premiere at Waterloo East Theatre from 5th of February 2019.Set in a special teaching unit for the containment of violent or maladjusted girls in Bradford in the nineteen-eighties, this witty and disarmingly charming play offers a peek into this chaotic world through the once rose tinted eyes of a recently qualified social care professional.The day centre is a place of confused limbo, with its only clear goal being to keep the girls off the streets. The girls themselves are lost but together they find small glimmers of hope through their humour and wit, an intrinsic of the plays younger characters as, even though almost broken by circumstances, their resilience is astounding. The small tokens of affection can be found in the very human interactions between these disturbed children and their over-worked and under-supported carers.Since 2016, school violence has been increasing once more (45 schools across England gave fixed-term exclusions to at least one in five pupils in 2016-2017). Tokens feels as relevant today as when it was written over thirty years ago. This play forces the audience to take notice of children who have fallen through the cracks of the system and have been left abandoned.This challenging yet funny production by Persever Productions will leave audiences unable to forget the girls who have so easily been disregarded by the system created to care for them.This show is not suitable for children due to mature themes and the use of bad language.