Theatre Production

Local Battersea resident and her team are to create a world of love, loss and longing in a vibrant experiential live performance examining the universal quest of looking for love entitled 'Reply to PoBox 49: A History of the Lonely Heart'

Set in a former 18th Century nursing home, The Battersea Mess and Music Hall, will host the event between 11-14th July, the first time the venue has ever been used in this way. Involving over 50 actors, writers, directors, producers and set designers the show explores and showcases the history of the lonely heart column, the comic and tragic of a universal quest: looking for love.

With more people than ever using dating sites to find a partner, the team will explore how advertising for love has developed since the first lonely heart advert was placed in the Matrimonial Gazette in the 1700s. From a defiant soul in 1787 seeking a man that “must never drink above two bottles of claret, or one of port, at a sitting” to our current day love seeker who “WLTW man with GSOH”. The team discovered that the reasons people advertise for love remain pretty much the same 300+ years later; relocating for work, long work hours and a lack of community within which to meet a partner.

From this, an experiential adventure has been created by a team of over 50 creatives including writers, directors, producers, filmmakers, actors and singers taking place in the old music hall and its intertwining rooms. The audience will be left to discover stories hidden in the depths of this expansive space from three 19th Century sisters desperate to find a man for financial security, to a 1980’s dating agency promising to find you never ending love. Led and coerced through the series of scenes by elusive guides and cross-century characters, Reply to: PO Box 49 aims to leave the audience moved, amused, shocked and intrigued.

The Wednesday 11th July performance aims to entice SW11 residents with a discounted ticket price.