In a cafe in Nicaragua, a girl opens up to her online therapist about her past and her longing for some sense of belonging in this brief and underdeveloped new work.
Caravan Tea Party, penned and led by Lauren Derry, centres upon Sophie, a girl with Romany heritage who is seeking to reconnect and reconcile with her lost roots. As a concept, the play has great potential, focusing on a culture and group of people who are underrepresented on the stage, yet in practice the piece struggles to dig deeply into Sophie’s longing for belonging, and Romany culture more widely.
It begins with great potential. The mystery of why Sophie has run off to South America is appealing, as are conversations about her ‘lost caravan’, and the gradual breakdown of her relationship with her father. This is also developed with some neat ideas about religious pressures and female conformity, but the ideas are undercooked here in a piece which feels more like a work in progress at this stage. Sophie’s therapist Robyn (Hannah Nox), offers little guidance here, in scenes which bizarrely become like a children’s game show or pantomime and that undo some of the genuine emotion Derry’s script tries to evoke.
At just under half an hour, Caravan Tea Party struggles to get into anything enough to make a concrete point, and it is here where the work needs a little refining. There are interesting avenues to go down, such as why Sophie has run to South America, a complicated relationship with her friends and a threatening and abusive one with her father, but these are all quickly skimmed over in a therapy session where the therapist seemingly asks very few questions. Indeed, the inclusion of a puppet bird, a representation of her self-conscious seems to haunt Sophie, is also a creative touch, but it needs more to it. It would also be interesting, too, for there to be a little more on Romany culture explored, rather than a fixation on just caravans.
While it does conclude with a strongly delivered monologue by a hard-working Derry, it is also a play which struggles to decide what it is trying to achieve here. The final scene is both powerful and abrupt, but other moments are undermined by crass anecdotes and flimsy punchlines which undermine its emotional intent. The potential avenues the play could go down spark intrigue, and could be explored in future redrafts, yet these all get redirected here.
Derry’s individual performance carries the show to a solid conclusion, and with a little more development and refinement, Caravan Tea Party could have this across the piece rather than just in its final moments. An uneven piece, but one with clear potential too.
