Michael Najman

VOICE FOUR

Occurring throughout the play, the voices are a kind of intermediary between the audience and Christopher’s interior state. They report facts, or echo things from within his auditory environment. Their accent should be unremarkable (probably Estuary) unless the thing they are relaying has some particular information conveyed by accent.

I’m thinking here of 32. SWINDON TRAIN STATION, 35. PLATFORM and 37. TUBE TRAIN

For these, the voiceover site https://www.advoice.co.uk/ should provide a rich selection


 REVEREND PETERS

Christopher says he’s “too old to be a policeman” and if that’s accurate, then he might be quite old. He uses the phrase “jolly exciting” and this gives me an impression of someone who would use RP, either because he’s not from Swindon, or because he’s got a more academic persona. The person in this video states at the beginning that he’s never been to Swindon, but his accent could work:


UNCLE TERRY

Well, we know he lives in Sunderland, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d have that accent. However, the first of his two lines contains the word “Uncle” which is a STRUT word. That might make it easier to point to Swindon.


STATION POLICEMAN

We’re still in Swindon, so the ‘Swindon Specials’ should probably be in evidence.

STRUT: young mother London touch just understand bloody
TRAP/BATH trance that rat back chat man
PRICE Christ overexcited alive eye Nigel

(BTW, XTC is a Swindon band, and I wonder if this character’s name is a reference to We’re Only Making Plans for Nigel.)


STATION GUARD

Just the one line, but Cockney would probably help us to set the scene as London.