“IF you arranged to meet a friend, you waited for them to turn up – no texting. It was a brilliant time. No, it was shit.”
But Jo (full name Josephine) has an escape route. In her bedroom, covered in pop star posters of Culture Club, the Thompson Twins, Human League and Bucks Fizz, pride of place goes to Annie Lennox.
Annie sparks something deep inside Jo. “I understood it was something just not what that thing was.”
Late to go downstairs for her tea, despite her mother’s growing anger, she must go through her weekly ritual of recording the Top 10 with Tommy Vance on her cassette radio recorder. And everything in her small world is perfect.
It’s the fantasy world of all that is Annie that preoccupies the teenager, who is slowly becoming aware of her sexuality and her lack of interest in boys. She soon realises she’s been living most of her life to a beat set by someone else and one which doesn’t suit her. “Annie was a bundle of contradictions and I wanted that too.”
So following her idol’s fashion, she ditches skirts and tops for jeans, trousers, pinstripe jacket and Church’s brogue boots. When she rejects the sexual advances of the most popular boy at her school, he screams “padlock” at her and it has a lasting effect. “I didn’t want to open my legs but I was desperate for attention.”
An episode of self-harming doesn’t work and no-one tales any notice. Annie’s lyrics “Everybody’s looking for something” rings in her head. She tells us she didn’t fancy Annie, “but I did wonder who was kissing her”.
And after going to an Annie concert, Jo creates fantasy stories about how they might meet. Amazingly a large button flies off Annie’s suit and Jo catches it. The fantasies that follow are all about returning the button and being asked to tea, or being looked down on after being hit by a car outside Annie’s hotel.
So as her teenage hormones turn into a deluge, she keeps her love of everything that is Annie. But in the end she says it’s not important who’s kissing Annie – it’s more about who’s kissing Jo – “And that’s another story” she tells us as she exits.
It’s a tightly written but overwhelmingly joyous theatre piece, devised and written by Jo Merriman and Stephen Farrier, performed by Jo and directed by Stephen. Jo engages us every second of the show, and her bright eyes and big smile makes us really like her and her innocent coming of age. As Annie sings “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree?”
Kissing Annie Lennox is at the Warren as part of Brighton Fringe on June 1 and 2.
To book tickets online, click here:
Review by Brian Butler