Naomi Petersen and George Taylor
(Picture: Alex Brenner)It’s notoriously dull listening to other people tell you about their dreams. What might feel urgent, strange or significant to them is just a random succession of events to you. And perhaps the same is true of family histories, unless they’re told with a brilliance that makes meaning out of the inevitable litany of marriages, declines and deaths. Playwright Barney Norris has mined the stories of his parents and grandparents for his latest play, but although there’s pathos in the passing of years, the result has the rambling, unstructured quality of an anecdote that goes on too long.
Admittedly, he’s aiming for authenticity, not pithiness. Where novels often begin with a disclaimer that “any resemblances to real persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental”, Norris makes no such claim. He uses his family members’ real names, and plunges the audience right into the country living room of his parents Fiona (Naomi Petersen) and David (David Ricardo-Pearce), as they celebrate the birthday of his war hero grandfather Bert (Robin Soans). But weirdly, Norris is depicting events he wasn’t actually present at. He’s only mentioned in passing as a brilliant child: “Barnaby’s very good at his reading now, isn’t he?”, he makes his proud grandmother Peggy (Barbara Flynn) say.
