Review: Street Voices 4

Set up by Madani Younis when he was artistic director at Freedom Studios, this is the fourth year of work which attempts to seek out some of the best emerging writers from across Yorkshire.

Working with scriptwriter Mark Catley over the past few months, the four best were selected to receive staging with some seriously impressive production values.

Staged in Leeds, Bradford and Barnsley over three nights, you have to admire the tenacity of the creative team in pulling this together. Catching the event on the last night, it was clear it had been something of a marathon, but one that everyone involved was capable of completing.

It was to some degree a little disappointing to see one familiar name in the roll call of four new playwrights, but it is encouraging that the scheme has also managed to find some genuinely new talent. Ironically, the least experienced of the four playwrights produced for the evening, appeared to be the most comfortable with the task in hand. The Sheffield-based writing team of Rav Sanghera and Paulette Edwards produced the stand out script of the evening, with a story that was heavy on comedy, but had plenty of pathos. The other scripts were a little ladened down by their own seriousness, but it is always entertaining to watch new work emerge into the light like this.