City Stories, St James Studio

Three short plays merging drama and live music, City Stories returns to the St James studio this year. The show is back by popular demand after a hugely successful run in 2012.

City Stories entwines three separate love stories, each of which is also a love letter to the London landscape. Award-winning playwright James Phillips cites his inspiration as ‘An unspoken, magical London. The streets and buses and secret places of London, and the people who live their lives here.’

The music, which forms the backbone of this production, is written and performed by singer-songwriter Rosabella Gregory. Recently commissioned by Broadway producers to write the songs for a brand new Musical, Gregory’s score has storytelling at its heart, making it perfectly suited for this kind of collaborative theatre. 

Each one of the three plays which make up City Stories has its own significance and tells its own story -- yet the production really comes to life when they are placed together and allowed to inform one another, creating another, greater, whole. In the intimate setting of the St James studio, these stories of life and love in London  invade the theatrical space, transporting the audience into the middle of a magical city of the stories and soundscapes. The production’s press material  prefaces the play by questioning the audience:

What happens when someone tells you that you’re the answer to the riddle of life?

What happens when a stranger in Starbucks gives you something that will change your world forever?

What happens if the world starts to fall asleep, hour by hour?

To find out the answers, and to experience London from a different perspective, we suggest you see the eye-opening play for yourself. It's showing monthly, from 22-23rd September, 27-28th October, then again from 14-16th November.