For Once

Book excerpt: In a place where everyone knows your name you can't forget who you are. Life, love and loss in a picture postcard town is laid bare in this heart-breaking but darkly comic new play. Through a series of interweaving accounts For Once cuts to the heart of a family, and a community, turned upside down by unimaginable tragedy. For Once examines the fallout after a car crash on a country lane takes the life of two local teenagers, through three interlaced monologues by their surviving friend Sid and his parents, April and Gordon, exposing the pre-existing faultlines in the family. Sid has been left partially sighted by the crash, and his account of his life before and since the accident gives an insight into why young people living in what seems like 'ideal' communities are driven to seek thrills elsewhere, sometimes with horrifying consequences. However, far from being depressing, Tim Price's skill at capturing the revealing inarticulacy of the teenager, as well as his troubled parents, makes for unexpected humour. For Once is a powerful and incisive look at life and death in a small market town and premiered on 8 July 2011 at the Hampstead Theatre in a production by Pentabus Theatre.