Harry From The Hill Review

          Harry is an 18 year-old living in posh Primrose Hill with adopted parents and ready to go to Oxford to study. Being at an age he feels he wants to find out the truth about who he is and where he’s from, he finds his biological mother in Harold Hill and does what he can to get to know her. He finds that while she wants him to be part of her family, not everyone does and there are explosive scenes involving differences of opinion. Many of the people he meets are happy to greet him and he does what he can to fit into their world, making friends with Lester, the leader of a group his age, through an interest of music and fitting in with them.

           Where he’s originally from, The Hill, is of as much importance to Harry and explains the history of why the people living there are the way they are. It goes from the end of the war to the estate being built, with people who were there at the time telling him how people were moved out of east London to their new homes. Some were happy to come but many missed the cramped lifestyle they were used to and returned to their old areas. The way those who stayed were treated by outsiders was derogatory and the fact they had to come into Romford to buy anything or go anywhere made life difficult but strengthened them as a community.

            Though the play is deliberately left without a defining end- that’s because  one person won’t change Harold Hill, but resolves his own story and is one of many that will come in the future- it is well enough written to give the audience an insight of what Harry is looking for. Community plays often miss out on details that need to be explained to outsiders and some of the humour is clearly aimed at local people, done very well. Being with a couple of people from east London, the play helped me explain the difference between people from here and there, differences in the way we speak and the way we live, even between Romford and The Hill.

             It would have been easy to have approached this play and made minor changes to describe most towns with estates but writer Kath Sayer has done a very professional job to make this unique to the area, along with songwriter Carol Sloman, who gave us a couple of songs I still have playing in my head.

             I’d like to see the reaction if this play was put on stage in Southend and Basildon and then made into a short film as it is now. It could be very interesting.

                                                                                                                                                   Tim. Coyle