As Leeds Playhouse welcomes back audiences, it is looking backwards as well as forwards. The theatre’s post-lockdown reopening coincides with its 50th anniversary, marked by a collection of new monologues. Involving writers and directors with close connections to the Playhouse, and featuring stories set in Leeds and the surrounding area, Decades reaffirms the theatre’s place within its community. Some of these monologues are more firmly rooted in their historical moment than others, and each takes inspiration from one of the six decades of the Playhouse’s life.
In Simon Armitage’s evocative slice of the 1970s, the threat of the Yorkshire Ripper haunts the action. You can taste the fear in the air as 13-year-old protagonist Wilf listens feverishly to the news and dashes between the safety of streetlights as he walks to meet his mum at the bus stop. Leanna Benjamin, meanwhile, uses the new millennium as a dramatic hinge for her narrative. The arrival of the 2000s is a moment of transition for a character struggling with huge upheavals in her life, though at times the writing prods its audience’s emotional buttons a little too hard. In other monologues, the historical context is just part of the backdrop, established through snatches of music or references to pop culture and politics.
It’s a challenge to build a compelling character and a satisfying dramatic arc in such brief snippets of stage action. At times, as in Maxine Peake’s impassioned piece, it feels as though character is a mouthpiece for the playwright. There are some gorgeous moments in this monologue, which looks back at the illegal, ecstasy-fuelled raves of the 90s and the brutal policing they faced, but Peake has a tendency to slip into argument, channelling her outrage into story beats that can come across as contrived.
In Stan Owens’s Pie in the Bus Stop, set in our current pandemic-shaped reality, the character’s central realisation about his relationship with his mum is similarly strained, seeming to arrive out of nowhere. Kamal Kaan’s 2010s monologue, meanwhile, is more a series of fragments than a complete, self-contained drama. This poetic exploration of displacement, sanctuary and the meaning of home needs more room to breathe; it almost seems like a starting point for something longer.
But some strong performances flesh out the skeletons of these short works. As wide-eyed new squat resident Loz in Alice Nutter’s ode to dole-funded creativity, Isobel Coward is an especially captivating stage presence. She brings the right mix of youthful enthusiasm, tender vulnerability and spiky edges to this engaging story of a young woman trying to figure out who she is amid the social and political tumult of the 80s. Connor Elliott as the teenager Wilf is also impressive, clothing primal dread in a fragile layer of courage. Delivering Peake’s and Owens’s monologues respectively, Eva Scott and Akiel Dowe smooth over the occasional bumps in the writing, each managing somehow to fill the whole stage even when confined to its centre.
The six disparate plays are held together by Amanda Stoodley’s flexible set design: a series of oddly beautiful scaffolding structures, elegantly lit by Kieron Johnson, suggestive of the changing structures of the city around the Playhouse. They conjure a place and a theatre that is still under construction – a constant work in progress that is busily rebuilding for the decades to come.
Decades is at Leeds Playhouse until 5 June.
