How Love is Spelt (NHB Modern Plays)

Peta is new in town and ready for whatever London has to throw at her. She's looking for romance, for friendship, for exciting people to lead her on big adventures. But being an independent woman in the new millennium isn't easy, especially when there's a constant reminder of the life you're trying to escape. With each new encounter, Peta flirts with what might have been, but has the journey to London put enough distance between her and her past? Chloë Moss's play How Love Is Spelt is a fascinating and funny play, which premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2004. It was revived by Brickdust and Project One at Southwark Playhouse in 2019. 'She wanted spontaneity, adventure... I said I can be spontaneous... I just need a little bit of time to plan.' 'The finest and most assured writing to be found outside the National Theatre this year... a moving and mature study of love, loneliness and the need to define one's identity... One of the year's undoubted highlights' - Evening Standard 'Moss's writing evokes these nocturnal collisions beautifully, using silence as powerfully as words, and brittle comedy as deftly as tremendous sadness' - Guardian 'A remarkably assured new talent. I can't remember a play in recent years that so adroitly captured the difficulty of being young and alone in the capital or did so with such refreshing humour...There's nothing loud or brash about this drama of youthful disillusion, but it's well worth shouting about' - Daily Telegraph

Chloë Moss is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. Her plays include: The Gatekeeper (Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2012); Fatal Light (part of Clean Break and Soho Theatre's Charged season, 2010); This Wide Night (Clean Break and Soho Theatre, 2008; winner of the 2009 Susan Smith Blackburn prize); The Way Home (Everyman, Liverpool, 2006); Christmas is Miles Away (Royal Exchange, Manchester, 2005; Bush Theatre, London, 2006) and How Love Is Spelt (Bush Theatre, London, 2004). She has also written extensively for television. Credits include Six Wives (BBC One), Dickensian (BBC One), New Tricks (BBC One), The Smoke (Sky1) and Prisoners' Wives (BBC One). She teaches the MA Playwriting course at the University of Manchester.