The Collision of Things

Tom's moved to London to find his dad. His dad's dead. Tom never even met him, but he's hoping to fill that absence by walking the same streets and mouthing the strange names of boroughs and stations that made up his father's world. When he moves in with Jan and Luciana, a happy couple trying for a child, things quietly splinter and lives are subtly rewritten.

Move to Stand's winsome piece uses light and witty moments of physical abstraction to colour the story of two people falling out of love with London while a third fights his way into it. Their lives fold open in long evenings of drinking and dreaming, as lines and languages overlap in a multicultural household that feels entirely real and identifiable.

Tom's hunt for his father is the only element that fails to coalesce, but it allows us to see him find London as a foreigner, transforming it into an exotic location filled with East End promise. His relationship to Jan and Luciana is elusive, despite his down to earth Yorkshire demeanour. At times he feels like a wedge driven between them, while at others he rings like Clarence, the visiting angel from It's a Wonderful Life.

Presented with a well-judged, pop-up roughness, it's an unpretentious piece of urban poetry. The Collision of Things is a surprisingly rare kind of story, one that traces the fault lines of an impact between two good people and a third, who is equally good, and has only the best of intentions.