A Teesside Voice

Set in 1994 in London at the dawn of mobile communications, “A Teesside Voice” is a strident commentary on Thatcherism. Rob Barlow, a Class-A drug-dealing northern immigrant to the capital, is inextricably tangled up in this highly lucrative but dangerous business. Money is designed to buy things yet it seems Rob, who has thousands lying around his unfurnished luxury apartment in London’s Chalk Farm, only uses it to make more. Despite living in a decadent material world where everything has an over-inflated price, Rob exists on less than the essential: drugs, cigarettes, rent, booze, taxis and luck. He has no friends - only customers, and they pay him to take the risks they daren’t. Emotional contact is reduced to brief sexual exchanges, human contact to voices on telephones and, when one voice starts threatening, his anaesthetized world unravels just enough to offer a splinter of redemption - but at what price?