> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Review: Generations @ Custard Factory, Birmingham
- URL: https://lichfieldlive.co.uk/review-generations-custard-factory-birmingham/
- Published: 2013-03-07T08:16:27.000Z
- Updated: 2013-03-07T08:16:27.000Z
- Author: Phil Preece
- Tags: Reviews, What's On, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-22 19:24

Pure utter filth. Right, now I’ve got your attention, just let me say, I don’t mean it. At least, not entirely. Because I went along to see this double bill of one-act plays part of the 2013 SHOUT Festival at the invitation of Darren Haywood who’s in it and knows I like new theatre. And am I glad I did.

The evening’s first offering, Thinking Straight is a short gay play from the seventies by Laurence Collinson, mainly in verse, about a writer whose male and female sides taunt him with the insincerity of putting his own words into a female character’s mouth. Sadly it didn’t quite come off for the simple reason that writers have always done this. Read Madame Bovary. They have to, to become from the inside-out the men, women and children, the saints and sinners they depict. James Parsons as the writer struggled valiantly with this conceit but its age showed badly and tired everyone, including the cast, out.

But the interval wait was worth it for The Lasting Sense of Sudden by Jonathan Ap Emrys. He compiled if this dry word adequately covers the living, breathing result of turning deeply personal true stories, some via email, Skype or just over the phone, into this exquisite play. Clever editing and the inspired direction of Robert Ball made these deeply personal stories moving, immediate, believable, and infinitely human over and over again.

These are universal tales of love, loss and loneliness, but also of self- discovery, through family, friends and partnerships that can resonate with everyone. I was in tears along with the rest of the audience at the testimony of one man excluded from his partner’s funeral by an ownership-claiming family. That he was able to transcend this by valuing the private nature of their bond made this worthy of the widest currency.

Peter M Smith has enormous quiet integrity here in a wide range of roles, while I should like to see a lot more of the Elizabeth Lloyd Raynes. Neil Jackson seems to me to be a find of the very rarest kind, an undiscovered star who specialises in faux naivety. Darren Haywood’s transformation into the self-harming transvestite nearly made my hair stand on end. A master class in theatrical style.

I would say rush and see it, but not if easily offended by nudity or graphic descriptions of certain acts normally kept private. But these entirely human stories deserve a much wider airing than the niche setting of an LGBTQ festival. A little editing in that department could see this reach those parts currently being bored witless by other less contemporary treasures.

Generations runs until Saturday at Birmingham’s Custard Factory.