By Michael Ross

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Direction that brings it all to life” ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“Inhabiting the same stage and making use of the same bed, the monologues’ respective directors Joseph Sherlock and Jeremy Thomas-Poulsen both deserve credit for helping their charges to deliver close to three hours of pulsating intensity. The action never lets up and the times whizzes by.”
(/Review: The Cph Post/ Ben Hamilton, Oct 2020)

“Last night I tried not to be shy, just as an experiment for one night – and with catastrophic results.”
/ Callum in The Shy Manifesto

The Shy Manifesto is a tender, bittersweet coming-of-age dark comedy  from 2019, about growing up shy and along with the pressures and double-edged sword of the social media age. 17-year old bookworm Harry, stuck in  Bournemouth, is surrounded in life by overconfident people. He has pretty much only his own room for company and decides to face his own demons after the utter chaos of his drunken escapades last night.

This play is as hilarious as it is poignant. Through the digital universe of his vlog, Callum delivers a potent manifesto, which reveals his intimate thoughts about sexuality, society, humiliation, self loathing and ultimately his quest for acceptance.

Shyness has rarely been explored in drama and in this piece, peppered equally by hilarious and poignant moments, “the writing is a gift to actors: light and energetic, lacking in pretension and full of compassion.”(The Guardian).
This piece of theatre coaxes trust from the audience and explores whether shyness should be accepted or whether it is something that needs to be conquered.