Jessica Harris watches the Midlands Arts Centre present a story of community.
The focus of Lyndhurst Memories (a work-in-progress) is local. Hyper-local you might think. At the core of the play is the wash-yard of the Lyndhurst Estate in Erdington. The wash-yard was designed for hanging out washing, but it’s become a place that the kids have claimed as their own. A place where they play football or just hang out. Or, at least, where they used to hang out until the estate got redeveloped.
But as the story plays out, we realise that the piece is dealing with universals. The significance of place in our lives and our memories. The issue of housing and of the communities that grow within housing estates. And the importance of friendship and of loss.
For CJ Lloyd Webley (CJ), writer of Lyndhurst Memories and also the narrator in the play, the wash-yard is Stamford Bridge, its goalposts made from a couple of scaffolding poles. But unlike the Chelsea pros, he and his mates don’t keep score. It’s more about the feel of the game, and of their sense of being together.
As time passes, the issue of how to deal with a growth in drugs and crackheads raises its head, and the effect these have on the estate. The council gets involved. As it grapples with regenerating Lyndhurst, it tries to design out crime. The housing on offer and the spaces it previously enclosed change. So too do its residents. As some move out, others move in. For CJ, the place of his childhood and his memories is no longer the same.
The piece is dynamic and its dialogue is authentic. Humour and moments of dramatic tension are well-timed. CJ’s body-language as he plays his younger self tells us worlds about the inner life of an awkward adolescent. Scenes depicting how adults look out for kids on the estate, and how they weigh up their choices when faced with regeneration are well observed. This is sensitive stuff authored by someone with lived experience.
Based on CJ’s own experience of growing up on the Lyndhurst Estate, Lyndhurst Memories was shared as a work-in-progress with an audience at MAC, many of whom grew up on the estate or knew it well. The performance was followed by a Q&A with CJ, the cast and members of the creative team, a great way of enabling them to get feedback and develop the piece further. VR and digital elements showing some of the research used in the production were also on display at the sharing.
The piece was commissioned by MAC as an initiative to inspire hope within the arts sector following Covid. As a hugely engaging piece of theatre which exudes warmth and energy, it seems set to do this.
Lyndhurst Memories (work-in-progress) was written by CJ Lloyd Webley and directed by Philip J Morris. The cast were: CJ Lloyd Webley, Yasmin Dawes, Mathias Andre’, Loretta Thompson, Ibrahim Ibrahim and Cory Mcclane.
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Pic – Reuvie Barbon.
