- at Live Theatre, a 40 minute play for Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox - was part of an evening of two plays called Double Lives, with co-writer-in-residence Sean O'Brien. They ran at Live Theatre between 13 and 30 November 2002. Julia later adapted the play for television and it was broadcast by Tyne Tees as Cold Calling.
Attachments is a play about a hoover salesman and a anaesthetist. There are nozzles, suckers, vacuum bags and offers of lifelong guarantees. It's about love and loyalty, and honesty. It's funny, explosive and sad too.
This play was part of an evening of two plays, with Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox in both pieces. Sean O'Brien's From The Underworld is a gripping, evocative story of two characters who meet in Hitler's bunker amidst falling bombs and wild sex.
David Whetstone wrote in The Journal:
[Trevor Fox is] at ease as the blundering vacuum cleaner salesman in Julia Darling's Attachments, which eschews intellectual wizardry in favour of belly laughs and emerges as the more rounded piece.
It is set in a kitchen but one we can all recognise. Davina, grieving for her ex, is preparing the funeral tea when in crashes Robbie with his gleaming gadget. Why did he pick on her house? Is it only domestic hygiene he cares about or is there a hidden agenda?
Answers emerge but only after an orgy of hilarious mayhem. If it had a sense of humour, the Hoover would have the last laugh.
and Elizabeth Scott, in Metro, gave it four stars and said:
Sales-spiel, black farce and egg mayonnaise sandwiches follow [Sean O'Brien's Underworld], in Julia Darling's Attachments. A trainee salesman tries to flog an expensive vacuum cleaner to a slightly deranged, mid-life-crisis-ridden anaesthetist. By the end, the dirt which has been discovered is not just that ingrained in the rug. You can be sure that when a play opens with a woman wielding a knife and a man protecting his honour with a vacuum nozzle, what follows will be fast, crazy and just a little bit silly.
On other pages: How To Behave With The Ill, Inside Out, National Poetry Day 2004, Sudden Blossoms, The Manifesto For Tyneside Upon England, The Great British Public Cold Calling The Writer's Choice, Personal Belongings, Doughnuts like Fanny's, The Last Post and Posties, The Lost Birds of England and Eating the Elephant.
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Last updated on 24 October 2003 by Roger Cornwell.
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