IT’S your birthday and you should be feeling on top of the world – only life isn’t always like that. Watford Palace Theatre’s resident company nabokov especially commissioned ten young writers to pen a story under the collective title The Best Year of Your Life , each writer taking one birthday between 16 and 25 as their stimulus. The result was a series of delicious vignettes, depicting how the irrepressible spirit of youth is slowly shaped by experience.

The plays were inventive, well-rounded and overall very, very funny. They ranged from the light-hearted – Nancy Harris’ Like A Virgin Sweet Sixteen – a hilarious deconstruction of Madonna’s lyrics – to the deep – Birth Day by Nicola Werenowska’s brilliantly choreographed two-hander about being a single parent. Watford actress Margaret Clunie showed her versatility in performing in both.

Expertly overseen by nabokov’s team of directors Jack Lowe, Josh Roche and Joe Murphy, the chronological sequencing made sense. The subject matter took a natural progression through sexual awakening and  unrequited love to the thrill of a first crush, before going on to tackle the love/friendship balance and the all-consuming relationship that takes over your life.

Stand-out plays include Phil Porter’s The First Wild Birds of Morning and Brad Bird’s offering Wanker in which an actor is on stage wearing only a pair of underpants.

“We’re the post-everything generation,” he says. “We've nothing left to destroy but ourselves.”
The innovative staging and skilful actors helped. Cordelia O’Neill was remarkable in Vickie Donahue’s Walking Home – a sparkling and scintillating piece that pushes the boundaries of what you can and cannot achieve on stage.

On for one night only, all of these pieces deserve a wider audience – if you want to know how to make pioneering theatre this is how you go about it.