Road, about life on a single road in a depressed northern town in the late 1980s, captures the despair of millions of people in Thatcher's Britain. A surreal vision of the contemporary urban landscape...uncomfortable and magical, funny and bitter.
The sad thing is that, while unemployment may no longer be so high, it has left a legacy of economic, educational and emotional impoverishment for several generations.

The play has been compared to Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and this is a good model for the structure of the piece: like the narrator in Thomas’s “play for voices”, Scullery, our drunken guide, meanders aimlessly up and down his road pointing out features of the grim landscape and setting the scene for the glimpses we see of the inhabitants' lives: he is both part of the scene and it’s creator.

There are some marvelous moments in Road: an old lady makes herself up, very badly, for a night out; a melancholic man mourns the loss of his past; a young couple starve themselves to death; and an older woman drools over the young flesh of a pissed-up soldier. And the great thing about the play for the actors (and I hope the audience) is the doubling. I’m talking about the opportunities for playing different kinds of characters in the same play. Eight actors will be playing over thirty parts — some so small you’ll blink and miss them, some larger than life: all of them vital components of the play and requiring close, detailed work. Don’t be afraid, they won’t bite — well, not all of them.

During intermission, the cast goes to the foyer and still in character, carouses, sings, makes jokes and generally plays up with the audience being right there with them. At the same time a full scale Disco is happening in the theatre, recalling a time of Saturday Night Fever, Madonna and many other disco favourites.

Through films (Brassed Off, Billy Elliot, The Full Monty & Vera Drake) and TV (Boys from the Black Stuff) we’ve become very aware of the school of ‘It’s grim up north’ drama, and to the casual observer Road may seem to be one of those. But what marks it as out of the ordinary is Cartwright’s writing, which creates a compellingly believable cast of characters but allows them the linguistic freedom to convey their greatest fears and dreams, the hopelessness of their hope.
Road may not have a conventional narrative, but its combination of laughter, violence, desperation and love is a journey in itself. And by the morning (the end of the play, as in Under Milk Wood), you’ll be hoping that its characters...
“SOMEHOW — MIGHT ESCAPE!”