Tomorrow at Noon

Jenny Ayres, Emma Harding, Morna Young

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786825087
• eBook ISBN: 9781786825094
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The playwrights of these three funny, moving and provocative plays were chosen from 390 entrants to write a contemporary female response to Noel Coward's Tonight at 8.30. Jenny Ayres' Glimpse is inspired by Coward's Still Life. It is the story of a woman whose history holds too much for her to leave behind. In a world that never stops, are we brave enough to wait? What might we glimpse if we miss the train? Emma Harding's The Thing Itself reacts to Coward's Shadow Play. When the sun fails to come up one morning, Vic and Simone must face the dark. But what emerges from the shadows? Truth or illusion? Morna Young's Smite is inspired by Coward's The Astonished Heart. It is a story of buried answers, blind hearts, and life after loss. ­­­­

GLIMPSE

a contemporary response to Noel Coward’s Still Life

by Jenny Ayres

An Introduction to Glimpse

Glimpse is a response to Noel Coward’s short play, Still Life, focussing on the themes of love and loss. Set on a station platform, also taken from Coward’s play, it continues the idea that a train station is a place between worlds where life and personal truth can be examined more clearly.

Punctuated by the passing of trains and tannoy announcements, I quickly realised that the train platform offers the audience a ready-made stage on which to observe those members of our community that are so often ignored. It is well-acknowledged that the modern-day traveller often turns their focus inwards, to their phones or their computers, so Glimpse offered the exciting opportunity for me to explore a world we all intrinsically know but very rarely see.

Set in the mid-nineties, against the backdrop of rail privatisation, I wanted to create an atmosphere of change both on a personal and a national level. In the current political climate, some are now speculating whether we should reverse the privatisation of our railways, so it seemed like an ideal moment to reflect on the world we thought it might bring just over two decades ago. Like Coward’s play, however, I wanted to keep the overriding focus on the personal rather than the political.

In scene three of Still Life Alec describes his love for Laura as ‘something lovely and strange and desperately difficult. We can’t measure it along with the values of our ordinary lives’. keeping this in mind, I was keen to write for a small cast where each could be mistaken as ‘strange’ but, as the events unravel, they allow us to re-examine our judgements.

Set over the course of a single Sunday, Glimpse presents a world of repetition on the brink of change and the comfort that can be found amongst others in the very brief moments between their scheduled arrivals and departures… In a place where everyone is trying to be somewhere else.

Jenny Ayres

Characters

Mags Woman, 60s

Clarke Female railway station employee, 40s

Woman Woman, late 20s

Tannoy Male voice

Setting

New Barnet train station, London

Time

Winter 1994

SCENE ONE

In darkness, the sound of a non-stopping train passing noisily through a station. Lights up. A grey, cold winter’s morning. Quiet. A crow squawks somewhere in the distance. An empty train station platform with a single metal bench, painted blue, positioned under a sign that reads ‘Waiting Room’. There is a doorway on the back wall. Four full carrier bags and a wheelie shopping trolley are grouped around one end of the bench and a bin at the other. A cardboard coffee cup is upturned on the seat along with a used train ticket. The sound of footsteps.

The station mistress, CLARKE, a woman in her forties, enters SL wearing railway company uniform and holding a bunch of keys. She looks up and down the platform. She notices the bags, checks her watch and then goes to unlock the waiting room door.

CLARKE (Turning away from the door and looking down at her boot.) Oh, for fuck sake!

She starts trying to clean her boot on the leg of the bench.

MAGS enters SR. A woman, in her sixties, wearing many layers of clothing, a woollen hat and three pairs of glasses around her neck. She is eating a bag of crisps.

MAGS Morning.

CLARKE Have ya seen this? Someone’s thro...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Smite
• The Thing Itself
• Glimpse