If We Got Some More Cocaine I
Could Show You How I Love You
VAULT Festival, The Vaults, Leake Street, London SE1 7NN
Wednesday 14th- Sunday 25th February 2018
Offie-nominated If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You is a play of small dreams and big hopes. John O’Donovan’s working-class love story explores the ways people find love and kindness, even when oppression kicks them from all angles.
Loveable tearaways Mikey and Casey are stuck on a roof. As they wait for the Guards to stop circling the house, they find that there are some truths you can’t climb down from. Set twenty feet up, this raucous romantic drama follows two young men as they smoke, drink and snort their way towards discovering love.
Alan Mahon (recently seen in Brutal Cessation at the Edinburgh Fringe and Hamlet at the Tobacco Factory) returns to the role of Mikey, for which he received an Off West End Award nomination for Best Male Performance. Joining the cast in the role of Casey is Josh Williams (One Night In Miami, Donmar Warehouse; Barbarians, Found 111; Wendy and Peter, RSC and Love and Information, Royal Court).
If We Got Some More Cocaine… is about going down roads not laid for you, climbing ladders that weren’t set out for you, never asking permission, and trying not to end up so thickskinned that you forget how to see the good in things.
Writer John O’Donovan comments, I loved imagining my hometown from that rooftop angle. Just thinking about the town and the places I used to wander around, but seen from above. It seemed significant to me that these characters that many see as lowlifes were being raised up, and from there could see further than most but now had no way of accessing the paths they could see. That seemed to me a good metaphor for what it was like to grow up poor, to always be at risk of being left behind by people who can routinely afford to go on to better things. You see them succeeding, but you’ve no idea how to get going on the path they took.
John O’Donovan’s debut play offers a rare and refreshing look at a gay relationship that is working class […]. The dialogue pops and crackles with rude affection… ‘If We Got SomeMore Cocaine…’ is a reminder that prejudices regarding sexual orientation, but also race and class, will never shift overnight (★★★★ Time Out).
WINNER of Best Playwright at IARA awards 2017. Time Out Critics Choice. Nominated for Best Male Performance at Off-Westend Awards and Best Director at IARA awards. This London run follows a four-week run in Dublin and the West of Ireland.