Notes to Future Self

Synopsis

"Judy’s my mom. It’s an understatement to say she’s a bit of a hippy. I mean who else but a New Ager calls their baby ‘Philosophy Rainbow’? I try to go by ‘Sophie’." Sophie and Calliope have never been to school. Their mum ran away from home when she was seventeen to join the New Age movement and the girls have been raised in Goa, San Francisco and Morroco at a series of ashrams, communes and impromptu raves. Then one day Sophie gets ill and the family has to return to Birmingham. Sophie and Calliope are introduced to a strange new world where meditation and tree-hugging are replaced with Maths homework and television. They’re also introduced to Daphne: the grandmother that the girls have never met. And it’s against this bewildering new backdrop - the normality she’s always longed for - that Sophie must come to terms with her own mortality.

Our Review:

8 April 2011

In its premiere production Notes to Future Self contemplates universal and timeless themes of family and mortality.  Thirteen year old Sophie has terminal cancer. Having been brought up travelling the world with her hippy mother Judy and older sister Calliope, the family suddenly find themselves thrust back into the normality of urban living, taking refuge with Daphne, Judy’s mother, in Birmingham whilst Sophie undergoes treatment.

With little set and just a few props simplicity of staging is key to this production. The narrative is solid enough and performances mostly strong enough to carry the play without needing extraneous matter cluttering the stage

The trio of supporting characters each have their own space on the stage where they continually retreat to which highlights the loneliness deeply embedded in all three. However, a poignant scene where the four characters bond and laugh over books in Sophie’s b...

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