Written by emerging playwright Lorenzo Allchurch (Bollocks) and directed by award-winning filmmaker and theatre director Alex Helfrecht (The White King, A Winter’s Journey), Lost Watches is a genre-defying psychological absurdist comedy-drama exploring grief, mental health and memory. The story follows Allen, a young man spiralling into hallucination and haunted confrontation as he prepares to lose the family home with ghostly visitations and a talking sculpture of Beat Generation writer William Burroughs leading the way.It’s a bold, unsettling debut from Allchurch, whose writing mixes dark comedy with emotional vulnerability in a uniquely theatrical style.
Lost Watches is, ultimately, a gripping, surreal new play which is a darkly comic meditation on memory, mental health, and mourning and the show will run in Park Theatre’s intimate Park90 space from 30 July – 23 August. Following his mother’s death and his father’s absence, Allen is left, barely an adult, with a house he cannot pay off and emotional trauma he doesn’t know how to process. However, on the weekend before his family home is due to be repossessed, Allen receives a series of unexpected visits that lead him down a dark path of discovery. Over one hallucinatory weekend, Allen is visited by ghosts and converses with a sculpted head of Beat Generation author William Burroughs as he confronts the emotional wreckage of a past he can no longer repress
A genre-defying psychological absurdist drama, Lost Watches blends rich theatrical language with biting wit and gut-punch emotion. It asks:
- Can the dead help us heal, or do they just linger in the dust?
- What happens when we can’t distinguish memory from invention?
- And how do we let go – of people, places, pain – before it consumes us?
It’s a story of haunting memory and fractured identity, told with surreal humour and emotional intensity. Lost Watches is a ghost story for anyone who’s ever felt stuck in time.
Ticket link: https://parktheatre.co.uk/event/lost-watches/
