I’m delighted to share that I’ve been invited to direct Merry Graham’s short new play What’s Going to Happen to Us? for a showcase at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes on 23 November 2025 under the theme of Anticipation.
At first glance, the play is set simply: a hospital room, a man in a dressing gown, and his wife who has just arrived. Yet within that modest setting unfolds a story of extraordinary tenderness and truth. Over five days, Don and May — a couple long accustomed to each other’s habits and rhythms — navigate illness, uncertainty, and the quiet realisations that come with a lifetime shared.
It’s funny, moving, and disarmingly honest. The dialogue crackles with real life and wit even as it edges into fear and vulnerability. What begins as a string of familiar conversations — about biscuits, football, and the slow grind of hospital routine — becomes a profound meditation on how we change, or resist change, and what it means to “keep buggering on,” as Churchill would have it, when life insists on testing us.
What drew me to the piece wasn’t only the writing’s sharpness and setting, but its emotional architecture. Beneath the banter lies a deep understanding of endurance — the small negotiations and shared language – and silences – that define long partnerships. There’s something quietly universal about two people confronting mortality not through melodrama but through the rhythm of daily life: teasing, bickering, remembering, and, ultimately, choosing to keep loving.
For me, directing this play at the OSO Theatre is an opportunity to explore that fragile space between routine and revelation — the way laughter can sit right beside fear, and how even a hospital room can become a stage for renewal.
If you’re in London on Saturday 23 November, join us at the OSO Arts Centre in Barnes for an evening of new writing and performance. Come see what happens when love, humour, and mortality meet under fluorescent lights. The anticipation is palpable!
What’s Going to Happen to Us by Merry Graham. Directed by Dr J. Rogel-Salazar. Performances by Alfredo Mudie Smart and Nora Holden