“Things can go two thousand miles per hour, fly up to altitudes where we can’t tell ‘em from stars in the sky, never open fire, and they can follow a Beaufighter through manoeuvres’d shake off paint. Lord, what I’d give for proof it ain’t Germans.”
France, December 1944: Journalist Ben Gardiner has come to the front lines of Europe to ring in the New Year with the pilots of 415th Squadron — young Americans who live their lives by night, and whose stories of unearthly lights and close encounters soon turn Ben’s visit into an otherworldly vigil…
Based on true events, Joe Edgar’s Round Lights is an account of very strange happenings at a very strange time, and of the ordinary (and extraordinary) people whose job it became to document phenomena that remain unexplained to this day.
Who is best placed to interpret the impossible? Can awe survive war? And most importantly — is anybody really out there?
Joe Edgar (writer and director) is a Cornish-born, London-based playwright interested in quiet, odd stories that allow audiences to encounter people and ideas they otherwise might not. He says about his play: ‘The UAP (formerly UFO) issue is an incredibly vexed one: mired in conspiracy and contradiction; dominated by obsessive, hypermasculine voices and viewpoints; and yet pointing to a real, ongoing phenomenon, remarkable as it is unexplained (or perhaps because it’s unexplained). This play is interested in the effect of extraordinary happenings on ordinary people, and in the perspective that can be lent by contact with something both inscrutable and wondrous — particularly in the context of a war-torn, dispiriting world. It’s also about the difference between seeking, welcoming or rejecting that contact. I hope people leave Round Lights open-minded, a little spooked, but full of human feeling and a gratitude to be clueless in a very large universe.’
Sosij Productions is an award-nominated theatre company founded on a shared desire to make the kind of show you’d want to watch twice.
Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 410 Brockley Road, London, SE4 2DH
Box office: www.brockleyjack.co.uk or 0333 666 3366 (£1.80 fee for phone bookings only)
Dates: Tuesday 17 – Saturday 28 November 2026 at 7.30pm.
Tickets: £17, £15 conc., 14+.
Running time: Eighty minutes with no interval
