Sometimes, a script doesn’t just land on your desk — it finds its way into your life.
The journey of bringing The Revlon Girl to the Green Room stage started about six years ago with a recommendation from a good friend working in London’s West End. She had just seen Neil Anthony Docking’s play at the Park Theatre and her message was immediate: "You need to do this play."
I got hold of the script straight away. I remember very clearly what it felt like reading it. It was exactly the kind of play we’re drawn to at The Green Room. A true story, clearly well researched, but more than that, it had real heart. It stayed with me in a way that not all plays do, and I knew then that at some point we would stage it.
A Six-Year Journey
At that point, we started talking about putting it on, and the plan was to open in November 2020. We would have been one of the first companies to produce it outside London. We all know what happened next. The world paused, and for us at Green Room, that pause became a much longer period of stillness. Following a two-year hiatus to navigate a time of profound personal loss, the company eventually found its feet again.
We planned to stage it last year, but as the dates lined up, something felt "off" until I realized that 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. Our opening night falls exactly on that date—October 21st. It feels as though the play was waiting for this specific moment.
Not a Recreaction, but a Reflection
What struck me most about Neil’s writing is that it doesn’t attempt to recreate the disaster of October 21, 1966, where 144 people were killed—116 of them children. We all know that outline. Instead, the play focuses on what came after.
It is a very intimate piece set eight months later. It allows the audience to sit in a hotel room with a group of mothers who meet every week just to talk and support one another. In one small, but quite extraordinary decision, they arrange for a Revlon representative to come and visit them.
It sounds like a simple idea, but in the context of what they have been through, it becomes something much more than that.
It’s a very intimate piece. There’s nothing overstated about it, and that’s part of what makes it so powerful. It allows the audience to sit with these women and really listen to them.
The Why Now
As I’ve started to look into the history more closely, there is so much about what happened afterwards that isn’t widely talked about. The impact on the community, the decisions that were made, and how people were expected to carry on.
That’s something I want to explore more over the coming months.
But in terms of the play, it feels important to be telling this story at a time when people are already reflecting on that anniversary. Not in a way that overwhelms it, but in a way that sits alongside it.
Looking ahead
This is the first of what will probably be a number of blogs as we work towards our October 2026 production of The Revlon Girl in Eastbourne and Lewes.
There’s a lot more to say about Aberfan, and about the real stories behind the play, and I’ll share more of that as we go.
For now, it just feels like the right moment to finally bring this one to the stage.