"Replay" by Nicola Wren
Nottingham New Theatre.

Yet again, the New Theatre students have introduced me to another play that is new to mine eyes and ears.

Nicola Wren is a writer I've not heard of before but after experiencing this wonderful, emotive piece of theatre, I'll be looking for more of her work.

"Replay" is the story of a woman revisiting her childhood, coming to terms with the pain of her past and finally realising that she needs to embrace the memory of her late brother in order to move on with her life.

It all starts quite comedically with a bad case of prawns and an upset stomach, and strangely enough also ends with prawns.While there's a lot of emotion in the story, there's also some nice humorous touches as well, keeping the play well balanced.

The piece is an hour long monologue by a policewoman called "W" who, with her colleague, has to go to a house to let the wife know that her husband has died. The family have a young daughter. The daughter asks W why her daddy left her like that, and that is the pivotal point of the play, bringing back memories of W's own loss.

It's W's Birthday and she has received a parcel from her mum which is something that she had unearthed and passed back to W. The parcel was a present of a tape recorder with a message left by her brother, which she replays over and over again.

When a close family friend decides to end their own life, the other members of the family can often feel betrayed and show signs of anger towards that person, and that is seen here with W, By playing the tape over, W works out her feelings by reliving memories of her brother.

These memories are shown in the form of shadow puppetry, and is possible the most technical show I've seen at NNT. It's definitely something I've not seen before at NNT, and with the shadows being black and white, it gave just the right nostalgic feel to the flashbacks.

Boo Jackson delivers W's monologues with humour and emotion. There's one part where she is reliving what her and her brother did to James' song "Sit Down" where you have to sit down every time the title is sung. This was quite emotional and showed in her face, as one would when remembering a lost loved one to such an unexpected and violent death. We know this through a nightmare flashback depicted by the shadow actors Louis Djalili, Beth Angella and NNT first timer Sally Johnston.

These three got the depth of the shadows spot on, especially when showing W as a young girl, making the shadow look small in comparison to Louis' shadow of her father and again as her elder brother.

The lighting for this show also makes this play very special and Jess Donndid a cracking job as the Lighting Designer.

Directed by Sam Morris after seeing this play at The Edinburgh Fringe and falling in love with it, and I can see why he did. He brought out that feeling of unexpected loss but also the hope for the future and coming to terms with such a loss. Sam says in the programme accompanying the production that he hoped that he did Nicola's work justice. I think you did just that, Sam.

Team work is always something that works so well at NNT and the production team and tech teams are like wizards of the stage as they create magic. Emily Sterling is the producer, Adam Frankland was Technical Director and Anne Clayton was Design Assistant.

You can do an awful lot with sounds. They can paint pictures in your mind and sound effects can take you to wherever the Director and Sound Designers, Adam Frankland and Stuart Ellis want to take you. From a tube station to a shopping centre, reliving James' song and the voice on the tape recording, these three transported us all to where they needed us to be placed.

I am sure that this play could be easily revisited for a longer run than the two days it's now completed, in the future, because this play did exactly what I've always said a piece of theatre should do; create some sort of emotion from an audience.

I noted that one male student in front of me was affected by this story, and you can't have a greater accolade bestowed upon a cast and crew than evoking some emotion from your audience by a piece of art created with talent and love. Both evident in "Replay"

Yet another NNT success to add to the long list of NNT successes gone before.