Our Share of Tomorrow is more of a journey than a story, charting the lives of three people as they come to terms with the past and the future.
It’s a voyage which always seems tied to the quay where Tom has been stranded, leading a shipwrecked life since Grace, his childhood sweetheart, left 15 years before. He is not the only one who wants her back, as he finds when he is visited by her daughter Cleo. She is driven by her need to understand where she came from, to hear more about her mother and in doing so perhaps to release Tom from his lonely vigil.
She is accompanied by an older friend, ex-soldier John who she has picked up along the way and who seems to have his own needs - to look after her certainly, but perhaps also to make amends for failures in his past to protect others in his care. In episodic moments the three tentatively reach out to each other to examine loss, love, remorse and possible redemption.
The dialogue is often abstruse, the actual words acting like marker buoys to the characters’ deeper inner lives and dreams. It’s a process of exploration – at one point character John says “I am trying to piece it all together”. The play has been created by having each of the cast members create entire imaginary worlds for their character with invented experiences and memories which are then pulled into the work. It’s to the cast’s credit that these detailed inner lives shine through, but there remains a feeling that there is more that the audience is not seeing.
The stylish set and simple but clever lighting evokes wide open spaces and endless skies, while the excellent sound design washes-in almost subliminal effects. The use of song within the production adds a wistful layer of place and time.
While it may fall short of cathartic it’s an affecting, accomplished piece of theatre that allows you to believe that sometime, maybe tomorrow, something will turn up that will change everything.
Show Times
Till 30 August, 1pm
Ticket Prices
£8.50-£10 (£7-£9)