A major new UK revival of Barney Norris’s award-winning play ‘Visitors’ will run at The Watermill Theatre, Newbury from Friday 31 March until Saturday 22 April. The play is set in Norris’s beloved rural Wiltshire, in a farmhouse just outside Pewsey. The arrival of a young visitor and a reunion exposes the cracks in the family’s relationships as they go through the major upheaval of learning to live and love with dementia. Click here to book tickets.
‘Visitors’ has been described as “a life-affirming tribute to love and gratitude for a life well-lived.” It premiered at the Arcola Theatre in March 2014. Following a national tour and a transfer to the Bush Theatre later that year, it was selected by Henry Hitchings for the Evening Standard and Mark Lawson for the Guardian as one of the best productions of 2014, and won the Critics’ Circle Award and the OffWestEnd Award for Most Promising Playwright for Norris. It was also nominated the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best New Play Award, and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright, and Best New Play from the Offies Awards
Barney Norris is an award-winning playwright and acclaimed author of novels ‘Undercurrent’, ‘Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain’ and ‘The Vanishing Hours’.
Barney Norris said, “’Visitors’ is a story about love, the way that love shapes a life, the way that love extracts a toll, the way that love defines us. It’s also a play about people clinging on to ways of life, trying to make the world work for them as it seems to be trying to fall apart. And a play about what it’s like to live in the country.
I wrote it fifteen years ago, a love song to the world I come from, and with this production I am bringing it home. The play’s set outside the north Wiltshire village of Pewsey, and the Watermill, I think, is the closest producing theatre to the play’s actual landscape. When Paul Hart, the Watermill’s artistic director, asked if I’d like to do it there, I jumped at the chance.
Revisiting stories as we go through our lives is a pleasure nearly all of us know – we all see multiple productions of the same Shakespeare, re-read our favourite novels, re-watch our favourite films. Returning to a play I wrote as a younger man has been a fascinating way of marking the passing of my own time. When I first staged this play, nothing had ever really gone wrong in my life. Now, a decade older, having survived some difficult times, and been a carer myself – care and caring are central to the vision of love offered in ‘Visitors’ – I look back at this play and I can see how I have changed. That’s exciting and intriguing – it will lead to a different production, and I can’t wait to see how it develops.”
In the wake of the shock news that The Watermill Theatre had 100% of its annual funding from Arts Council England cut, the Newbury venue has launched a new fundraising campaign – THRIVE. Individuals can donate from as little as £1 to show their support and ensure that the work of The Watermill, and everyone who is part of its community, can continue to thrive. There is also the option of becoming a Friend of the Watermill, from as little as £30 per year.