Not Now, Dear… Is Becoming a Play
Some stories start tapping their feet, waiting for a stage. This is me admitting that Not Now, Dear… has begun to do exactly that.
I’ve started adapting the book into a stage play — a sharp, funny and thought-provoking evening of theatre carrying the same spirit as the book: the quiet revolutions, the very well-placed heel, and the comedy of a world changing faster than anyone quite agreed to. If everything goes to plan, I’m aiming for 2027.
Now the honest part, because I’d rather tell you straight than oversell it: it is early. The script is still being written, and there’s a long road between a promising draft and an opening night — redrafting, workshops and readings, funding, a director and a cast, and eventually a venue willing to take it on. None of that is in place yet. There’s no date, no theatre, and no festival booked. And that rather glamorous marquee above? A daydream — a concept mock-up of what it might look like one day, not a poster for anything you can buy tickets to just yet.
A play is a book that refuses to sit still.
Why the stage? Because this material seems to want it. A single voice gathering her thoughts out loud, a room full of people leaning in, the timing of a laugh that lands half a second before the truth does — theatre is built for precisely that. The heel-on-the-globe was always a little theatrical anyway.
So take this less as an announcement and more as a promise made out loud, which is a fine way to make sure I keep it. I’ll share the honest version of the journey here as it unfolds — the wrong turns as well as the wins.
In the meantime, the book that started all this is already out in the world. In Ireland you’ll find Not Now, Dear… on the shelves at Easons and Dubray, as well as online — a good way to get acquainted with the characters before they learn to project to the back row.
If you’d like to follow along — and, when the time eventually comes, be first to hear about readings, funding milestones or (dare I say it) tickets — the journal and the mailing list are the place to be. No noise. Just the occasional dispatch from a play slowly finding its feet.