City Stories

Book excerpt: What happens when someone tells you that you're the answer to the riddle of life? What happens when a stranger in Starbucks gives you something that will change your world forever? What happens if the world starts to fall asleep, hour by hour? City Stories is a new type of cabaret drama, a sequence of interwoven love stories, and a love-letter to London. Composed up of five discrete yet interwoven stories, each taking the form of a monologue or duologue, and performed with specifically composed songs, City Stories looks at a variety of experiences of love and loss via a range of people living in the UK's capital. Elegantly written and beautifully constructed, these pieces look at the varieties of love and how it might save us, showing James Phillips's writing at his very best. City Stories received its world premiere at St James's Theatre, London, in 2013 and has since gone on to establish a year-long residency at the theatre.