The ending is so explosive and disturbing it will leave you chilled … believe me, it will haunt you for a long time afterwards.
The reviews for Hello? were almost universally good. The judges who chose it as one of the four Woolwich Young Radio Playwrights’ Competition winners called it “a harrowing, totally convincing play”, and its director Tim Crook said “I have never seen an audience so moved as the 600 people who saw Paul’s play performed at the Cambridge Theatre”. On the whole, the reviewers tended to agree.
A sobering fist in the guts with exceptional simplicity and clarity of purpose.
In the press, certain themes began to emerge: the dialogue was naturalistic and convincing; the ending powerful and affecting; Julie Smith gave a performance that would make many actors twice her age extremely proud. But one man’s worthwhile is another man’s worthy, and that was how Donald Hutera (also in Time Out) saw it: he decided that “the piece builds well enough to a scary climax and it has some merit as an educational drama”, and its only real saving grace was Julie Smith’s performance.
A vivid piece of writing … horrifyingly effective.