Cinema Taught Us How to Fall in Love. But What Happens When Real Life Refuses to Follow the Script?
This September, a bittersweet new twist on the classic romantic comedy is making its official world premiere at Kennington’s White Bear Theatre.
We’ll Always Have Paris, a sharp and moving new play by Paul Kalburgi, promises all the charm of your favourite silver-screen romances—with a beautifully tender, realistic bite.
Described as “a romcom with a broken heart,” the play follows Ginny, a cinema usher and aspiring screenwriter in her forties, as she attempts to piece her life back together following the death of her fiancé.
Haunted by the picture-perfect happy ending she thought was waiting for her, Ginny finds herself forced to confront heartbreak and the messy reality of starting over when life pulls the rug out from under you.
This isn’t your conventional love story. In fact, it’s the anti-romcom that begins precisely where most movies roll the credits.
Born from Kalburgi’s own personal reckoning with the tropes of modern romance, the play dissects the classic beats that have shaped our collective idea of love—the meet-cute, the grand gesture, the dramatic airport chase—and asks what happens when real life refuses to play along. Yet, for all its emotional weight, this isn’t simply a story about grief. Director Kay Brattan describes the play as a journey towards “a new beginning,” exploring the universal pressure to have our lives completely figured out—and the quiet courage it takes to embrace who we become along the way.
While you certainly don’t need to be a cinephile to be swept up in Ginny’s journey, the spirit of old Hollywood romance is woven into the play’s DNA. Cinema provides both the language and the visual world through which Ginny makes sense of love, loss and the life she thought she was going to have. And despite its intimate 50-seat setting, the production promises an unexpectedly ambitious visual experience too, with imaginative staging and projections designed to evoke the nostalgia of an old cinema.
Following development workshops and staged readings in London, We’ll Always Have Paris arrives in full production after being named a finalist for The Adam 2024, New Zealand’s prestigious national playwriting award. The production stars Lisa Depuis as Ginny, Cyril Blake as Jerry & Others, and Eliza Williams as Trish & Others.
Funny, tender and quietly devastating, We’ll Always Have Paris asks a question that classic romantic comedies rarely do: What happens when the credits roll before you’re ready for the story to end?
White Bear Theatre, 138 Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4DJ
15 September – 3 October 2026 | Tuesday–Saturday, 7.30pm
Tickets: £20 / £17 concessions
https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/we’ll-always-have-paris
