A two-hander by local playwright Roger Goldsmith about a man stammering during a high-stakes presentation, with a Q&A session.
The Presentation runs at The Barn Studio Theatre from Thursday 1 to Saturday 3 October, with evening shows at 7:30pm and a 2:30pm matinee on the Saturday. It's a two-hander by local playwright Roger Goldsmith, and the story comes from his own experience of growing up with a speech impediment.
The play is set in the 1980s and follows Tom, the head of an engineering department in the oil and gas industry. He's in the middle of a high-stakes presentation to win an offshore oil project contract, but while he's fighting to get his words out, his private life is falling apart: his wife has left him and his mother has recently died. Goldsmith describes it as a raw, tender story of connection, courage and the power of finding your own voice, and it moves through humour, heartbreak and hope.
It's not the first time the play has been staged. It ran at London's Bread & Roses Theatre in 2025 under a different name and has received Arts Council funding. The production is a two-hander, so it's just two actors on stage for the whole thing.
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There's more to the evening than the play itself. Every performance is followed by a Q&A with Goldsmith and speech therapists, where they talk about speech impediments and their social impact. If you're interested in that side of things, it's a good reason to stick around after the curtain.
Tickets are £11, with £5 concessions, plus a booking fee. The Barn Studio Theatre is on Milton Road, Portsmouth, PO4 8PR.
