Review: Local, Finborough Theatre ★★★

Local, a one-woman play written and performed by Liz Richardson, currently playing at Finborough Theatre looks at what it means to be from somewhere; what it means to belong. This debate is currently playing out loudly on the global stage: can someone non-white be British? What does it mean to be American? Richardson’s story is rooted in a very specific corner of England, and there is real value in that. Cumbria is not a place London theatre often turns its attention to, and stories this local deserve to be heard as much as any other. The show is generous with the physical geography, mountains, rivers, the shape of the land are all clearly drawn. What it struggles to convey is something less visible: the particular sense of otherness Richardson describes in not being from the Lake District proper, despite living on its doorstep. That feeling, of being adjacent to somewhere rather than of it, is quietly one of the most interesting ideas in the piece, and I wanted more of it.

There is also a quieter thread here about parenting, and it perhaps deserved more space than it got. Like me, Richardson’s parents were not from where she grew up, and now she is raising her own daughter somewhere different again. That question, of where a child locates their sense of identity when they are not brought up in the place their parent calls home, is one I recognise, and it is a rich one. It runs underneath the play rather than through it.

The world is full of invisible boundaries, and Richardson is far from alone in knowing one. In London, it is easy to be on the wrong side of the tracks, lines that carry no signage but are read fluently by everyone who lives near them. A child from the estate two streets over from a good school catchment knows this as keenly as any Cumbrian on the wrong side of a fell. These lines exist everywhere people draw them, which is to say everywhere, and Richardson’s story is really just one local instance of a very general human habit. She never quite draws that thread out, though, and so what could have felt universal stays stubbornly local.

Written and performed by Richardson, we are told at the start that there will be no ending to the story. A series of vignettes built around the theme of “local” or “belonging” could still have worked, but here it did not quite hang together. It felt a little as though the first part of the play had been a chronological account of searching for what it meant to be local to her area, and then further material of similar interest had been added later.

The scenes where Richardson contemplated the eventual loss of her parents were the most moving and powerful in the piece, and it is easy to see why they were included, but they might have been threaded through more successfully. The question of whether a place stays home once your parents are no longer there to return to would also have sat easily among the questions the play is already asking. Decluttering the family home offers another moment of real poignancy, the role objects play in defining home laid bare, and this too could have been folded in earlier, when she talks about her family moving out (though, as it turns out, they do not).

An excellent 1990s playlist sits us firmly in her childhood, as does a carefully observed set, pastel floral furnishings, roller skates, piles of National Geographic, a landline phone. Projections built into a window in the set add a real sense of place and are used well for her early diary entries.

Richardson is a compelling performer and the other characters she brings to life are equally believable and likeable. A more tightly focused premise, perhaps trimmed down to 60 minutes from its current 75, would perhaps have let the strength of the material better shine through but this is still an enjoyable exploration of one woman’s identity.

[Thank you to Natalie Beech for a gifted ticket for an honest review.]

Listing details:

Local
Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Written and performed by Liz Richardson, directed by Amy Hailwood
14 July – 1 August 2026, Tuesday to Saturday 7.30pm, Saturday and Sunday 3pm matinees
Running time: 1hr 15min
Tickets: £20 (£18 concessions), rising in later weeks; £15 previews (14–15 July); £10 under-30s tickets for the first week; £15 for RBKC/Hammersmith & Fulham residents on 18 July
finboroughtheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: James Kirby

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