Woolston-based author Ali Sparkes has written a new play for Radio 4, inspired by the tales of tollbooth workers on Southampton’s Itchen Bridge.
Billed as a ‘festive romcom’ starring comedian Shaparak Khorsandi (pictured top with Ali), Tess of the Tollbooth explores the developing relationship between tollbooth worker Tess and a drummer called Rob who crosses the bridge most nights on his way home from work. Can their regular 20-second interactions lead to love?
Ali had the idea for the play back in the early noughties when the bridge was staffed day and night, before the introduction of an automatic system in 2010.
As an occasional user of the bridge, I’d often have a few seconds of chit-chat with the people, mostly women, who collected the tolls and gave the change,’ she said.
‘I started thinking about how it might be possible to build up a friendship if you saw one of them regularly enough. Could you do that, get to know each other, in multiple 10- or 15-second exchanges? Then I wondered if you could fall in love that way? The idea tickled me, and Tess of the Tollbooth began forming in my mind.
‘I spent some time chatting to the tollbooth workers who were brilliant; bright and funny and full of stories of the weird and wonderful things that happened on their shifts, especially the overnights.’
Although Ali’s first draft of the play wasn’t commissioned at the time, the idea stayed with her and during the pandemic she decided to rework it. ‘I’m a big believer in recycling!’ she told In Common.
This time the BBC said yes and Ali spent two days at New Broadcasting House this summer with the play’s director Nadia Molinari and her cast. ‘Working with these talented people was a highlight of my year’, said Ali.
Several of the stories which crop up in the play are pretty much verbatim – as told to Ali by the tollbooth workers. ‘Most are hilarious,’ said Ali. ‘But some, given the bridge’s sadder history as a jumping off point for those who can’t go on, were pretty tragic. The workers had intervened more than once to save a life’.
As well as airing on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 20 December at 14.15, the play will be available on BBC Sounds afterwards. Take a listen as Tess’s night shift world steadily descends into a festive farce and there’s a life to be saved before New Year’s Day. It might even be hers…
Ali Sparkes is the multi-award-winning author of more than 50 books for children and young adults, as well as the author of crime thrillers for adults (as A D Fox). Her novel Frozen in Time is a Blue Peter Award winner and thriller Car-Jacked was a finalist for the National Children’s Book Award, while Wishful Thinking was Carnegie-nominated. Ali lives in Southampton, quite close to the Itchen Bridge, with her husband, two 20-something sons occasionally in residence, and a labradoodle who inspired her latest children’s novel, ‘My Sister is a Dog’.
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