Tag: Billie Collins

The Walrus has a right to Adventure

Large Theatres
The cast of The Walrus has a Right to Adventure at Liverpool Everyman.
Image credit: Ean Flanders

Written by Billie Collins

Directed by Nathan Crossan-Smith

LIVERPOOL EVERYMAN
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Billie Collins is definitely one to watch as their work is evolving at a rapid rate from their debut play Too Much World At Once in 2023 to last years collaboration with Thickskin, the excellent Peak Stuff. Their latest work, The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure is an utterly charming piece that weaves together three stories full of  warmth and wit within a big ecological heart. Three central characters each have a startling and life-changing encounter with a wild creature inspired by real life stories. This is a genuine ambitious play that is weird and wonderful in equal measure. Featuring a walrus, a stag, a bear, and a big queer soul this is a quicksilver exploration of our intimate connection to the natural world and the power and beauty of metamorphosis.

Director Nathan Crossan-Smith knits together three wildly different stories with a surprising amount of coherence and emotional punch. At the centre of each vignette is an encounter with the unexpected: a young shelf stacker is confronted by a majestic white stag in Halewood Tesco, a fierce mother bear derails a wedding proposal in Colorado while  a walrus decides to inhabit a fishing boat in Norway. These surreal interruptions crack open the lives of three characters grappling with identity, purpose, and possibility.

Tasha Dowd in The Walrus has a Right to Adventure at Liverpool Everyman.
Image credit: Ean Flanders

Tasha Dowd is endearingly grounded as Rio, a Tesco night-shifter whose brush with the mythical stag nudges them toward self-exploration. There’s a tenderness and subtlety in Dowd’s performance that makes Rio’s journey quietly powerful. Each performer also plays multiple other characters through the narrative and each character Dowd inhabits is vividly drawn and deeply engrossing down to the quiver of a hand that evokes an elderly parent or the physical menace of a redneck, second amender. Princess Khumalo’s Hazel is sharper-edged as a young woman suddenly thrown off-course by a man on one knee with a bear behind him. Khumalo brings great comic timing but grounds it in something rawer when Hazel begins to unpick what she really wants. Meanwhile, Reginald Edwards delivers a charmingly dry turn as Oskar, the Norwegian tour guide whose boat becomes a walrus squat. His blend of deadpan resistance and existential bewilderment is a comic highlight.

The set, designed by Chloe Wyn, is sleek and inventive allowing for seamless shifts between continents and climates. Live Foley sound effects (from composer and sound designer Oliver Vibrans) are used to delightful effect, turning rustling trees, crashing antlers, and grunting walruses into an audible playground. The whole staging evokes a vintage radio play unfolding before our eyes. Rajiv Pattani’s lighting keeps the pace slick and the transitions fluid. There is a really beautiful look to the whole production that has a really avant garde European style that evokes an Ivo van Hove piece.

It is a testament to the writer and the cast and creatives involved that the multiple storylines which could easily have felt a little fragmented remains fluid and cohesive. Collins’ writing sparkles with wit, but also isn’t afraid to pause for introspection. The play gently interrogates how we live, love, and consume—and who we become when nature elbows its way back into our human bubbles. Most refreshing is the queer narrative running through Rio’s story. It’s treated not as an issue, but as a tender, joyful part of life…messy, moving, and very human.

Ultimately, The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure is an exuberant, slightly bonkers reminder that ultimately the wisest thing we can do is listen…to the animals, to each other, to ourselves.

The Walrus Has A Right to Adventure at Liverpool Everyman
Image credit: Ean Flanders

Liverpool Everyman 12th-21st June 2025

Too Much World At Once

Small Theatres
Paddy Stafford as Noble and Ewan Grant as Ellis. Image credit: Chris Payne.

Written by Billie Collins

Directed by Adam Quayle

HOME

The biggest things happen

In the quietest of ways

And we don’t even notice

Don’t even see it

Don’t make a fuss

Or a dance

Until…

Too Much World At Once is an impressive theatre debut for Billie Collins. This coming of age story has big aspirations; looking at themes around queerness, mental health issues and environmental disaster. There is a real lyricism in the writing and a strong feel for naturalistic dialogue. It’s no mean feat to write a fifteen year old boy who turns into a bird and readies himself to fly thousands of miles to his neurotic sister who is doing her bit for climate change by gathering data on albatrosses on a remote island in Antarctica. Meanwhile closer to home his Mum is struggling to connect and parent in a fractured family, while teaching and trying quite literally to hold the family home together. New boy Ellis is a breath of fresh air to both mother and son, bringing colour to their lives in ways that go beyond his nail polish and rainbow take on school uniform. It’s a lot to cram into two hours on a small stage but director Adam Quayle does a excellent job of bringing the writers’ vision to life. Quayle who is the Joint Artistic Director of Box of Tricks has made this ambitious debut look and feel authentic.

Alexandra Mathie, Paddy Stafford, Ewan Grant and Evie Hargreaves. Image credit: Chris Payne.

The staging by designer Katie Scott is really beautiful in its simplicity. The central dias is shaped like the Earth with a backdrop of decaying wood…orange boxes, simple wooden furniture, bare window frames and driftwood that look like they may have been washed ashore. Overhead hangs a chandelier of driftwood that is reminiscent of the sword of Damacles. This staging is compact but highly effective in driving the narrative of the play. It’s further enhanced by sensitive and imaginative lighting by Richard Owen. At times the soft spread of light looks like the oceans of  Earth or the rich splatter shades of guano. The lighting effects are at times simply gorgeous as in the closing moments where the the cast are lit like a rich tableau that is truly memorable.

The four actors are all well cast and give good performances. Paddy Stafford as central character Noble embodies the withdrawn boy who has closed off from his mother and desperately misses his sister. He gives a highly effective performance as he transitions into a bird and the occasional delicate movements of his head evoke a curious, perhaps wary bird. Evie Hargreaves plays his sister Cleo, a research scientist on Bird Island who is pulsating with nervy energy, passionate about conservation but overwhelmed by the harsh reality of the task and her surroundings in Antarctica. Alexandra Mathie is Fiona, their mother and the local science teacher. She is utterly believable as a brusque Northerner who seems more sentimental over her crumbling family home than sensitive to the emotional needs of her children. The force of nature in the play is Ewan Grant as Ellis, a newcomer to the school and excluded by his peers due to his sexuality. Grant exudes the enthusiasm and openness of a Labrador puppy bringing an upbeat and humorous energy to the production. He is the perfect foil to this family who have lost their way and each other.

Collins writes with the confidence of a natural poet. There is an innate lyricism and a sense of magical storytelling in this piece. It will be exciting to see her work develop as a playwright. The central flaw within Too Much World At Once is precisely that…there is a lot of world and not enough about who the characters are within this world on stage. This is an exciting premise for a play but the characters feel underdeveloped at times. The mother has some back story and context yet it is frustrating to watch this woman who sits painting the nails of a boy her son barely knows instead of battering down the doors of the local police when her 15 year old child has been missing for days. A lot of the action in this narrative is driven by what has happened within the fractured dynamics of this family unit yet these are barely touched upon. What has happened in the marriage? A deeply depressed and highly anxious daughter…is she living out her mothers’ unfulfilled ambitions? Most frustrating is the central character Noble as he never feels fully fleshed out…but perhaps he is just a fledgling in a damaged nest.

Director Adam Quayle has done a lot to make a potentially tricky play come to life on a small stage. At times the production can seem unwieldy or too busy as the chorus moves around swooping like birds or moving chairs like they are being swept away in a storm. This would all probably lend itself more effectively to a larger stage. The sound design by Lee Affen adds additional charm as he works magic to bring the world of nature and the elements to life onstage. This is a big play on a small stage but perhaps aptly so…

And this is all I know…that it’s a good world to be small in. And there is so much here to love.

HOME 3rd March -11th March 2023

Box of Tricks Theatre tour