“A Trip to ‘Tamagotchi Heaven‘”

By M.L. Zambrana

David Tennant (onscreen, left) and Amanda Drew (Emily, right)

Catherine Tate: It would have been about ten years ago... the first thing I saw you in was a play that you were in, but not present at. And it was called "Tamagotchi Heaven." Edinburgh Festival. Please say it was you. It WAS you! You remember, "Tamagotchi Heaven"? You, on screen, and it was about, you know, those little Tamagotchi pets? David, it was you. Get off it! It was you!

David Tennant: I have no idea what you're talking about!

(uproarious laughter and applause from the audience)

CT: It was YOU! Or was it Nick Tennant?

DT: (laughs) That was Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys.

CT: Yea, oh, right... David, seriously... cast your mind back.

DT: What do you mean, I wasn't-- I wasn't present?

CT: Okay. It was a PLAY at the Edinburgh Festival--

DT: Yes, we've established that...

CT: And it was about a woman who, instead of a boyfriend, got a Tamagotchi pet.

DT: Right?

CT: And somehow she did have a boyfriend and you played the boyfriend, but they filmed your bit, so you were only on film--

DT: OH! YES!!!

CT: YES!!!

DT: YES! AH HA! You know, you're absolutely right!

CT: Thank you very much.

DT: Yea, I did-- that was a long time ago! And I genuinely didn't know that that was the name of it. It was, I was, I was, I was doing a play called "Hurly Burly" in the West End, in London's glittering West End, and the assistant director went on to do something in Edinburgh. And she said, "Oh, uh, would you film this little bit?" And I did it, sort of in about an hour and I never thought any more about it. I never met anyone who SAW it!

- radio show "Chain Reaction," with Catherine Tate (host) and David Tennant. First aired February 21, 2008 from 18:30-1900 on BBC Radio 4.

David Tennant (center, in yellow shirt) on the cover of the “Hurly Burly” programme

"Tamagotchi Heaven" (A Bit Of Rough Theatre Company) was written in 1998 by then-23-year-old Kara Miller and presented at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play was sponsored by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, a UK-based advertising agency, and ran from August 7-August 31, 1998 at Festival Venue 33 (The Pleasance Theatre).

Miller, an account planner at Abbott Mead at the time, first made her writing and acting debut at Edinburg with the play "Undine” in 1997. "Undine" ended up on several British radio stations (including a BBC Radio 4 Monday play), was "Pick of the Week" for Time Out, the Telegraph and the Mail, and led the Times to refer to Miller as "a Great British Hope."

"Tamagotchi Heaven" consisted of two female parts and one male part. It starred Amanda Drew (Emily) whom the programme described as a "vindictive,

sex-starved, unaccomplished 29-year-old secretary."

Syan Blake, of Frankie in Eastenders fame, played Emily's flatmate Janice--a black woman in a firm of white male solicitors, proud of her achievements and with no time outside of her career for relationships or any Tamagotchi nonsense.

The third character was Tama, played by Russell Bond, the person inside the plastic toy. The play was described as "a Bridget Jones without the sense of humour."

A large movie screen at the back of the stage showed video clips of the people as Emily called them, including David Tennant's character. The screen also showed the development of Tama using swirls of color for atmosphere.

The story takes place in a London flat, with Emily in the midst of an intense relationship with her cyberpet as she tries to stop thinking about a banker she slept with after a party. Emily's "smug married friends" call to tell her she is no longer welcome at their dinner parties, as she would "ruin the evening's balance" because she is single. She is obsessed with beating the record for keeping a cyberpet alive. In one scene, Emily even uses her Tamagotchi to masturbate with (under a blanket and clothes); as a result, the play carried a "Strictly Adults Only" warning.

In the end, it was intimated that Emily lost her job... and she definitely lost her cyberpet. Tama (Bond) performed his dying song onstage as he went to Tamagotchi heaven. And the banker disappeared as well, "probably to his pregnant model wife," so her life falls completely apart.

One of the best articles written about “Tamagotchi Heaven” was by Kara Miller, and appeared in The Scotsman:

"Despite all my talk of theatre and tosh, I had fallen in love with the magic, the unpredictability and the sheer juicy thrill I found to be at the core of it. Tamagotchi Heaven was, at first, an idea for a short film but on 31 March 1998, one month before the deadline for the Edinburgh Fringe programme, I realised that I did not want to do it any other way…

“Tamagotchi Heaven is a tragi-comic tale about Emily and her cyberpet. Emily is a vindictive, sex-starved, unaccomplished 29-year-old secretary frustrated by hopeful one-night stands, fairweather friends and unamused flatmates. In this play I tried to capture the zeitgeist. It does not pretend to be yesterday or tomorrow but it is most definitely and unashamedly ours - our own delightfully absurd nicotine-stained present.

“Only in theatre could I invite you to taste sweat and smell tears while exploring a world where good friends, living in the same town, speak on the phone every night but meet, perhaps, only five times a year. A wild and surprisingly reasonable no-man's-land. Imagine a civilisation so attuned to its own fetishistic needs that when it runs out of the space and energy for real pets, it simply invents virtual ones to replace them. Easy? These virtual pets comfort eat, can become anorexic and often reflect the insecurities of their human parents, right down to their meaner foibles.

“In this play, as Emily becomes increasingly detached from a world that spurns her, an intimate relationship develops between her and the Tamagotchi which, as it progresses, becomes increasingly sexual. How could you not experience that live?"

Other articles written about the play appeared on the BBC News website ("Tama-Gotcha!" - Friday, August 28, 1998), on the Campaignlive.co.uk website ("Campaign Diary: Kara is ready to put a pet project onstage..." - August 7, 1998 by Mairi Clark) and in the “British Theatre Guide Info” (1998 Fringe Reviews 1).