In Australia, Gerry hopes to meet his mother for the first time. Despite being almost sixty, he has spent his whole life believing he’s an orphan.
In Liverpool, Mary brews a good, strong pot of tea. Nothing posh. But she’s as nervous as a pig at a butcher’s.
Determined to uncover his past, Gerry and his daughter Sally embark on an extraordinary journey home – halfway across the world – in a precarious bid to bring their family together.
Through a programme created by the British Government and eagerly supported by an Australia in the throes of its ‘White Australia’ policy, between 1945 and 1968 over three thousand British children were told they were orphans and sent to Australia on a promise of warmth, fresh air, abundant food and opportunity. Instead they arrived to deprived institutions where neglect and abuse were the norm. Tom Holloway’s tender new play unearths a secret buried by time that, in turn, exposes a world of historical injustices currently in the limelight.
This European premiere reunites the Bush with HighTide Festival Theatre (Incognito by Nick Payne, 2014) and is directed by HighTide’s award-winning Artistic Director, Steven Atkinson.
For this co-production HighTide Festival Theatre is supported by Lansons, the Richard Carne Trust and Royal Victoria Hall Foundation.
George Dennis’s theatre sound design credits include: The Homecoming (The Jamie Lloyd Company/Trafalgar Studios, Olivier Award nomination); The Pitchfork Disney, Killer (Shoreditch Town Hall); The Convert, In the Night Time, Image of an Unknown Young Woman, Eclipsed, The Edge of our Bodies (Gate Theatre); Babe, the Sheep-Pig (Polka Theatre/UK Tour); Harrogate (also HighTide Festival), Fireworks, Liberian Girl, Primetime (Royal Court); The Mountaintop, The Island (Young Vic); Imogen, The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe); In Fidelity (Traverse/HighTide Festival); Noises Off (Nottingham Playhouse/Northern Stage/Nuffield Southampton); German Skerries (Orange Tree); Brave New World, Regeneration (Royal and Derngate/Touring Consortium); Forget Me Not, Visitors (Bush Theatre); Eventide (Arcola Theatre/UK Tour); Chicken (Eastern Angles/Unity Theatre); Beautiful Thing (Arts Theatre/UK Tour); A Breakfast of Eels, The Last Yankee (Print Room); peddling (Arcola Theatre/59E59, New York/HighTide Festival); Mametz (National Theatre of Wales); Minotaur (Polka Theatre/Clwyd Theatr Cymru); Spring Awakening (Headlong); Love Your Soldiers (Sheffield Crucible Studio); Thark (Park Theatre); Moth (Bush Theatre/HighTide Festival); Hello/Goodbye (Hampstead Theatre); Liar Liar (Unicorn Theatre); Good Grief (Theatre Royal Bath/UK Tour); The Seven Year Itch (Salisbury Playhouse); When Did You Last See My Mother? (Trafalgar Studios 2); Debris, The Seagull, The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (Southwark Playhouse); A Life, Foxfinder (Finborough Theatre).
“That powerhouse of new writing” Observer
FORGET ME NOT is the eighth collaboration between the Bush and HighTide. It follows INCOGNITO by Nick Payne and PUSSY RIOT:HUNGER STRIKE by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova , which like FORGET ME NOT was directed by HighTide’s Artistic Director Steven Atkinson. HighTide Festival Theatre is one of the UK’s leading producers of new plays, and one of the few professional theatres focused on the production of new playwrights. Now entering its ninth year, HighTide has premiered more than fifty productions by now major playwrights including Ella Hickson, Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Nick Payne, Adam Brace, Beth Steel, Sam Holcroft, Luke Barnes, Vickie Donoghue, Anders Lustgarten, Jack Thorne and Joel Horwood.
Lily Arnold is a Set and Costume Designer who trained at Wimbledon College of Art. Her design credits for productions include: Snow In Midsummer, The Jew of Malta, King Lear, The Taming of The Shrew and The Rape of Lucrece (RSC); Broken Biscuits (Paines Plough), Forget Me Not (Bush Theatre); The Solid Life Of Sugar Water (Graeae/NT); Beached (Marlowe Studios/Soho Theatre); The Edge of our Bodies, Gruesome Playground Injuries (Gate Theatre); The Sugar Coated Bullets of the Bourgeoisie, Peddling, So Here We Are (HighTide); Minotaur (Polka Theatre); Yellow Face, World Enough and Time (Park Theatre); The Boss of It All (Assembly Roxy/Soho Theatre); A Season in the Congo, The Scottsboro Boys (Young Vic, Clare Space); Happy New (Trafalgar Studios); Ahasverus (Hampstead Downstairs) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Cambridge Arts Theatre) and Room (Theatre Royal Stratford East). lilyarnolddesign.com
Steven is the co-founder and Artistic Director of HighTide Festival Theatre. His directing for HighTide includes Lampedusa (Soho Theatre/HighTide Festival); peddling (Arcola Theatre/Off-Broadway/HighTide Festival); Pussy Riot: Hunger Strike (Bush Theatre/Southbank Centre); Neighbors (Nuffield Theatre/HighTide Festival); Bottleneck (Soho Theatre/UK tour); Clockwork, (HighTide Festival); Bethany (HighTide Festival/Public Theater, New York); Incoming (Latitude Festival/HighTide Festival); Dusk Rings A Bell (Watford Palace Theatre/HighTide Festival); Lidless (Trafalgar Studios/HighTide Festival); Muhmah (HighTide Festival); The Pitch (Latitude Festival). His other direction includes Three Card Trick (Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse); The Afghan and the Penguin (BBC Radio 4); Freedom Trilogy (Hull Truck Theatre); Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Edinburgh Festival).
Tom is an award-winning Australian playwright. Plays include Beyond the Neck (Performing Lines, Tasmania, 2008 – winner of the Australian Writers’ Guild award for Writing For The Stage); Don’t Say the Words (Griffin Theatre Company and Tasmania Theatre, 2008); Red Sky Morning (Red Stitch Actors Theatre, 2008 – Green Room Award for Best New Australian Play); And No More Shall We Part (In Australia, Griffin Theatre Company, 2011 Winner of the Australian Writers’ Guild for Writing for the Stage and the Louis Esson Victorian Premier’s Award for Literature; in the UK, Hampstead Theatre London and Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, 2012) and Love Me Tender (Company B Belvoir St/ Griffin Theatre Company and Thin Ice, 2009 & 2010); Gambling (Soho Theatre/ Eleanor Lloyd Productions, London 2010); Fatherland (The Gate Theatre, London 2011 and Munich Yung Og Radikal Festival); Forget Me Not (Co-commissioned by Liverpool Everyman and Belvoir Street Theatre and produced by Belvoir, 2013).
