The Unreturning (Touring)

A Frantic Assembly & Theatre Royal Plymouth Production

The Unreturning

A new play by Anna Jordan

I want to return to my home. I want a hero’s welcome: fanfares and brass bands and sausage rolls and jaeger bombs. I want to lie under the skylight on my mum’s bed and watch clouds. I want to go out in my hometown, drink and dance and shout for no reason! I want to sing in the streets and puke in the gutter and they will never know. None of them will ever know what I...

Can beginnings be made out of endings? In a British northern coastal town, three young men are coming home. In 1918 George returns from the Western Front. In 2013 Frankie is back from his final tour of Afghanistan. And some time in the not-too-distant future Nat returns from an overseas refugee camp to what was his hometown. Their stories are beautifully interwoven in this compelling new play featuring Frantic's celebrated physicality. The cast will include Jared Garfield, Joe Layton, Jonnie Riordan and Kieton Saunders-Browne.

The Unreturning explores the profound effect that war has on young lives, and asks - what does coming home really mean? What is home? And when experience has shattered you into a million pieces, will home help to put you together again, or treat you as an ugly truth it does not want to confront?

All four members of the cast for The Unreturning were part of the Ignition programme, now in it's tenth year, before they went on to train professionally and pursue acting careers.

“Performed with heart and focus, it is fluid, brooding and intense.” THE GUARDIAN