Wish List

Wish List Synopsis

A sensitive, delicate and powerful play that asks what our labour is worth and how life can be lived when the system is stacked against you.

'I dreamt about this last night. I dreamt that I was packing boxes in boxes in boxes.'

Tamsin packs boxes in a warehouse, on the clock, to a target, with a zero-hour contract. Her brother Dean is housebound, working to obsessive-compulsive rituals of his own.

When Dean is declared fit for work, their benefits are cut. There are phone calls to make, appeals to lodge and endless forms to fill in. Tamsin must pack faster, work harder, and fight to get the support she and her brother so desperately need.

Katherine Soper's play Wish List won the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting and was co-produced by the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, and the Royal Court Theatre, London. It premiered at the Royal Exchange in September 2016 and the Royal Court in January 2017, and Katherine Soper was named Best Writer in the 2017 Stage Debut Awards.

'The play has such eloquence, such quiet craft, such dignity and such compassion' Sir Nicholas Hytner