Wish List (Royal Exchange, Manchester)

Katherine Soper's Bruntwood Prize-winning Wish List is about "the system" - the system that controls us, the system we are part of, and the system we design for ourselves. It's a remarkable play which reveals its multiple layers the more you think about it, and it's no wonder the Royal Exchange/ Royal Court collaboration has been wowing audiences.

Wish List centres on brother and sister Dean and Tamsin Carmody, who live together in a rundown flat in Milton Keynes struggling to make ends meet. Dean (Joseph Quinn) suffers from an array of OCD and anxiety-related issues - he ritually gels his hair in times of stress, he cannot go outside in the daytime (or the night-time!), he struggles with talking to strangers or using the telephone, or even cooking for himself, because he has to run through a certain routine of tapping surfaces in order to move forward. Dean is a prisoner of his compulsions, but after inexplicably being deemed fit for work by the DWP, he has his benefits cut, and the siblings appeal the decision in an effort to prove that Dean is certainly nowhere close to being able to exist harmoniously with the outside world.

To cover their costs, Tamsin (Erin Doherty) secures a job at a packing factory (Amazon, by any other name) and falls into the trap of a zero-hours contract and exhausting targets which prove virtually impossible to attain.

Erin Doherty (Tamsin) and Joseph
Quinn (Dean)

Soper's writing gives the characters naturalistic dialogue, adding even more realism to a script peppered with painful truths about what it's like to be part of "the system" in 2016. Each of the play's four characters is affected by some kind of loss or lost potential: Dean's disorder has been exacerbated by the death of his mother; Tamsin's ambition to be a physicist and study the stars has been derailed by having to care for her brother; Tamsin's boss (Aleksandar Mikic) may impress rules and targets upon his staff, but he's only doing what he must to both keep his own job and provide for his young family; and Tamisn's work colleague (and love interest) Luke (Shaquille Ali-Yebuah) may come across as laid-back and easygoing, but beneath that there's a guilt seeded by his mother who doesn't want him to move away and leave her when he finishes college. His horizons are limited too.

The script sparkles with energy and pathos, brought to energetic and affecting life by four top-class performers. Quinn (best known as the troubled Arthur Havisham in the BBC series Dickensian) is astonishing as the debilitated Dean, whose life is reduced to four walls (often the walls of the bathroom) and an inability to interact with the real world around him. Quinn's twitchy, irked performance is well-studied, and must be exhausting to give, complete with repetitive hair washing and gelling, and finger-tapping. The scene where he's left alone to heat up some tomato soup is edge-of-the-seat terrifying, made all the more effective by Giles Thomas's brooding, menacing, plangent sound design and score.

Erin Doherty (Tamsin) and Aleksandar
Mikic (Lead)

Erin Doherty's Tamsin is a fascinating creation. It's in the writing, but Doherty gives the character a humanity and attraction only a good actor can bring. Tamsin's compassion for her brother is all-consuming, and you wish she could be tougher and a little more selfish, but her selflessness is the character's allure. She becomes a victim of the factory's Orwellian rules and regulations: she has to phone Dean at home during her lunch break, but when her boss confiscates her mobile, she's told that the nearest phone is a 15-minute walk away - and she's only given a 30-minute lunch break. Kafka would be proud!

Aleksandar Mikic's factory shop floor manager (credited as Lead) represents the frustrations in Tamsin's life, but he has a heart as well - there's a lovely little exchange between Tamsin and her boss where she questions the system he imposes upon her, and he explains why he has to do it, demonstrating that he isn't doing it out of malice, but necessity, as are those above him, and those above them. And just one line - where he asks Tamsin to consider how much she thinks the children who manufactured her clothes were paid - brings Britain's zero-hour contract controversy into stark perspective.

Shaquille Ali-Yebuah
as Luke

Shaquille Ali-Yebuah is charmingly charismatic as Luke, who takes Tamsin under his wing on her first day at work. The two develop a beautiful rapport and eventually go on a date, which ends up back at her flat. Luke is a former schoolmate of Dean's, and so can understand the issues Tamsin has with him, and demonstrates great compassion of his own. But it's the Meat Loaf scene which grabs hold of your heart and spins it around in a joyful embrace - Tamsin tries to sing I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) to Luke, and the connection Doherty and Ali-Yebuah have in that bonkers moment is why live theatre is the best form of entertainment on the planet. Every single member of the audience had a huge grin on their face during that scene, proving that characters can be just as real as the people watching them when great writing meets cracking actors.

Wish List deserves all the plaudits it's had, as does Soper, who should have a stellar career ahead of her. The play transfers to London's Royal Court in January, where it should garner even greater and more vociferous praise. See it; you won't forget it.

The stats
Writer: Katherine Soper
Director: Matthew Xia
Cast: Erin Doherty (Tamsin); Joseph Quinn (Dean); Aleksandar Mikic (Lead); Shaquille Ali-Yebuah (Luke)
Performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, September 24th to October 15th, 2016. Performance reviewed: October 15th, 2016 (matinee).

Links
Wish List on Royal Exchange website (retrieved Oct 17 2016)
Wish List on Royal Court website (retrieved Oct 17 2016)
Bruntwood Prize website (retrieved Oct 17 2016)
Interview with Katherine Soper (retrieved Oct 17 2016)